Former President Donald Trump won big this week after the Georgia Court of Appeals halted a sweeping racketeering indictment against him in a case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. The ruling means it will be nearly impossible for the case to head to trial before the November presidential election.
On Tuesday, the Georgia Court of Appeals scheduled its hearing to weigh an effort from Trump and seven other co-defendants’ to disqualify Willis from trying her case against the former president over his alleged attempts to overturn the Peach State’s 2020 election results. That hearing is set for early October.
One day later, the appeals court said the case will be on hold until a panel of judges rules on whether Willis should be disqualified, and a decision is expected by March 2025, though it could rule sooner.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee had initially allowed proceedings in his courtroom to continue as the appeals court weighed an appeal of his decision to allow Willis to remain on the case.
Trump and seven other co-defendants in the sweeping racketeering case have been attempting to get Willis disqualified from the case due to a romantic relationship she had with Nathan Wade, the now-former special prosecutor she hired to handle the case. Defendants who joined Trump’s appeal argue she financially benefited from the relationship with Wade, who defense attorneys say paid for several vacations the pair took.
In March, after several hearings where lawyers for Trump and his co-defendants sought to prove their case against Willis and Wade, McAfee ruled there wasn’t enough evidence to prove Willis financially benefited from the relationship. But he said their relationship left an “odor of mendacity” so potent that either Willis or Wade needed to step down. Wade resigned the same day as McAfee’s ruling.
Now, a question remains as to what happens to the remaining defendants who did not join Trump and other co-defendants’ appeal to disqualify Willis. The appeals court technically only stayed the cases of Trump and co-defendants Mike Roman, a Republican operative whose attorneys uncovered the secret relationship between Willis and Wade, along with defendants David Shafer, Robert Cheeley, Mark Meadows, Cathy Latham, Rudy Giuliani, Jeff Clark, and Harrison Floyd.
The remaining defendants who were not part of the disqualification appeal include former Trump campaign attorney John Eastman, Ray Smith, Misty Hampton, Trevian Kutti, Stephen Lee, and Shawn Still.
Eastman told the Washington Examiner Thursday evening that his attorney is planning to file an appeal on First Amendment grounds by Friday, though the ex-Trump attorney said that he welcomed the stay by the appeals court that put the cases of the nine other defendants, including Trump’s, on hold.
“The [Georgia] Court of Appeals has taken up the disqualification motion. We look forward to taking up the other appeals of our First Amendment claims as well. But if it rules that DA Willis is disqualified, that case will get assigned to either another county or another attorney or special prosecutor and we fully expect such a person would take a new look at the appropriateness of this unprecedented RICO charge against political opponents,” Eastman said.
Eastman is also appealing McAfee’s refusal to dismiss two counts alleging false statements to Georgia legislators, though he is not part of the group that appealed to disqualify Willis.
Trump, who last week was found guilty in New York on 34 counts of falsifying business records, told reporters on Wednesday that he thinks “we’re doing very well” on his various legal battles.
“We had a big thing happen in Georgia today,” Trump said Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Willis’s team also plans to appeal McAfee’s previous decision to dismiss six counts in the indictment for lack of specificity, including two counts against Eastman and three counts against Trump.
A spokesman for Willis’s office said they could not comment on the appeals court order, according to CNN. A source told the Washington Examiner that Willis can ask the appeals court to speed up its decision on this matter, but other than that the district attorney has little recourse. A spokesman for Willis’s office did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment.
Trump’s current victory in Georgia is mostly centered on delays of his criminal proceedings. He’s similarly seeing positive signs in Florida in the case accusing him of stashing classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after he left the White House. There, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon said she would hold a hearing on June 21 about whether special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment to oversee the case was proper, and she appears open to hold a hearing on whether Trump could put investigators under oath so that his attorneys can question them on various constitutional questions surrounding the Florida indictment.
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The former president is also doing well politically in Georgia, despite his 2020 election loss there and his mug shot taken at the Fulton County Jail last August. A Quinnipiac University poll released this week shows Trump leads President Joe Biden 49% to 45% in the state, despite the fact that half of Georgia voters agreed with his conviction in New York.
A Fulton County grand jury in August indicted Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in a sweeping plan to illegally try to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Four defendants have pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors, but Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty.
