A Georgia appeals court has paused the 2020 election-interference case against President Donald Trump indefinitely, until a panel of judges determines whether or not Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can prosecute it.
Last month, a Georgia state court agreed to consider an appeal from Trump’s defense that asked judges to revisit Fulton County Superior Judge Scott McAfee’s refusal to disqualify Willis from the case. Willis had an “improper” romantic relationship with the case’s then-special prosecutor Nathan Wade, a conflict of interest Trump’s defense claims should have disqualified her from prosecuting Trump’s case.
The lower appeals court is expected to rule on Willis’s disqualification by mid-March 2025, making it unlikely that Trump’s trial will commence before November’s presidential election.
Judges Benjamin Land, Todd Markle, and Trenton Brown make up the panel that will hear the appeal. Until the Georgia Court of Appeals issued its stay order on Wednesday, McAfee had planned to proceed with pretrial motions as the appeal was pending. Any movement on the case is now “stayed pending the outcome of these appeals,” the court said in its order.
McAfee previously allowed Willis to stay on the case as long as Wade stepped down, but acknowledged that Willis displayed a “tremendous lapse in judgement” and wrote that the case carries an “odor of mendacity.”
Georgia’s delay comes one week after Trump was convicted in New York on 34 counts for falsifying business records. Trump’s classified documents case in Florida was also halted indefinitely this year, as was his election-interference case in Washington, D.C.