Defendants said the judge’s decision was “plain legal error requiring reversal.”
Former President Donald Trump and several codefendants appealed Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee’s decision to not disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in the Georgia Court of Appeals on March 29.
Ms. Willis is prosecuting President Trump and 14 others in a high-profile racketeering case that charges them with participating in a criminal conspiracy to challenge the results of the 2020 election.
The appeal was joined by Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, Jeffrey Clark, Robert Cheeley, Michael Roman, David Shafer, Harrison Floyd, and Cathleen Latham, who argued that the trial court judge found “damning evidence” of a “significant appearance of impropriety” yet failed to order a remedy.
“While the trial court factually found DA Willis’s out-of-court statements were improper and Defendants proved an apparent conflict of interest, the trial court erred as a matter of law by not requiring dismissal and DA Willis’ disqualification. This legal error requires the Court’s immediate review,” the application reads.
Defendants argued that the judge had erred in applying the standard for disqualification, and if he erred in his ruling it would require the entire case to be tried again.
The judge had indicated the 15 defendants would be tried in separate groups, and the prosecutors have said each trial will take the same amount of time, three to five months.
“It is neither prudent nor efficient to require the courts, the parties, or taxpayers to run the significant and avoidable risk of having to go through this painful, divisive, and expensive process more than once when an existing structural error can be remedied by this Court now.”
They further argued that disqualification is the “minimum that must be done to remove the stain of her legally improper and plainly unethical conduct from the remainder of the case.”
The defendants also pointed out that Ms. Willis had previously been disqualified from prosecuting a case against a defendant because she had helped fundraise for his political rival. They argued that her behavior has now been “separately denounced by two superior court judges” and her removal from the case is ethically “necessary.”
