Without explanation, the Georgia Court of Appeals canceled oral arguments over whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be disqualified from prosecuting President-elect Donald Trump and his allies on state RICO charges.
Next month, the state's appellate court was scheduled to hear Trump's legal team — as well as lawyers representing his eight remaining co-defendants — argue for the Democrat DA's disqualification after a Fulton County judge allowed Willis to remain in charge of the election interference case (so long as her lover, then-special prosecutor Nathan Wade, stepped aside).
However, roughly two-and-a-half weeks out, the December 5 court date was abruptly dropped in a surprise decision Monday evening. No reason was given for the cancelation, and a statement simply said it's scrapped "until further order of this court."
🚨🚨 BREAKING LEGAL NEWS 🚨🚨
— Phil Holloway ✈️ (@PhilHollowayEsq) November 18, 2024
The Georgia Court of Appeals has abruptly cancelled oral argument in the #FaniWillis Trump RICO disqualification appeal pic.twitter.com/pk1Q0ufOSn
The one-sentence order shocked some of the attorneys involved in the appeal, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
"It's not something you normally see," said defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant, whose bombshell filing from January was the first to expose the salacious Willis-Wade affair.
"They could reschedule it," she said. "It could mean they don't need to hear oral arguments and can decide it on the merits."
The three-judge panel assigned to the appeal case could have made Monday's move in light of Trump winning the 2024 election. As recent as October 23, the trio of judges, all GOP appointees, agreed to extend the time allotted for oral arguments. Now, it's unclear if the oral arguments will occur at all.
Merchant, who is arguing on behalf of former Trump campaign aide Michael Roman, said the Georgia appeals court had abruptly canceled oral arguments in the contempt of court case involving rapper Young Thug's lawyer, Brian Steel. The court subsequently issued a ruling finding that the judge overseeing the Young Slime Life RICO trial had erred in holding Steel in contempt.
"This sure is similar," said Merchant, who served as Steel's counsel. "Maybe they will decide the case without arguments," she said of Trump's appeal, "but I don't know."
Reacting on X, Townhall columnist Phil Holloway similarly said it might mean the court is prepared to rule on the basis of the briefs alone. "I suspect this is bad news for Willis, but we shall see," Holloway stated.
Merchant's original 127-page motion to disqualify accused Willis of financially benefiting from her appointment of Wade, saying she hired him to spearhead the prosecution of Trump as part of a "self-serving" scheme in which she was wined and dined on the taxpayer's dime. At the time of the Trump probe, the two admittedly took trips around the world together, including trysts in Belize, Aruba, Napa Valley, and the Bahamas, bought by Wade's taxpayer-funded earnings.
Willis and Wade were both grilled about the affair in a series of sensational prosecutorial misconduct hearings. Judge Scott McAfee, who presided over the proceedings, opted not to kick Willis off the case on one condition: Wade resigns. Her boyfriend obliged, letting Willis stay. Following the non-disqualification decision, Trump's camp appealed, and the higher court agreed to take up the case. The sprawling racketeering trial has since been placed on hold pending the outcome of the appeal.
"The trial court should be able to sever the other defendants from Trump and proceed to trial," ABC News legal contributor Chris Timmons remarked on X. Georgia State University professor Anthony Kreis concurred, "I think that's what is happening here," speculating that severance is the next step if the case were to continue without Trump.
Willis also won reelection in a landslide, cruising to another four years as Atlanta's district attorney. "I think it is a referendum that they want me to continue to do the work," she said of the electorate. As for Trump clinching the protection of the presidency, in a post-election interview with Atlanta News First, Willis announced she's pushing ahead with the Trump prosecution anyway despite the development, noting she has the "patience" to wait out Trump's term if need be.
Trump "won't face trial in [Georgia] until 2029, if ever," Lawfare senior editor Anna Bower said.
Trump's lead attorney, Steve Sadow, was reportedly gearing up to ask the appeals court to dismiss the case outright because his client is about to return to the White House. Citing presidential protections, the legal challenge would have sought to toss out the entire case on grounds that Trump is the newly elected president. The argument would have been based on longstanding U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) policy that says a sitting president cannot be brought to trial on federal charges; this should apply to state prosecutions too, the Trump challenge was supposed to assert.
In the aftermath of Trump's triumph, the DOJ began winding down the two federal cases against Trump on account of a 2000 memorandum out of the department's Office of Legal Counsel, which upheld a Watergate-era conclusion that prosecuting a sitting U.S. president would "impermissibly undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions."
The memo noted a 1973 opinion "focused exclusively on federal rather than state prosecution of a sitting president," saying it also proceeds on this assumption and would not consider constitutional concerns that may be implicated by a state-level prosecution of a sitting president. While it's an untested theory, legal observers believe the same ban forbidding federal prosecutors from going after sitting presidents could apply to criminal cases brought by state attorneys.
Pointing to the legal precedent, Special Counsel Jack Smith moved to vacate the court calendar, a concession that signified an expected end to the DOJ's lawfare campaign against Trump. The prosecution will accordingly "assess this unprecedented circumstance" and file a status report by December 2 or "otherwise inform the court of the result of its deliberations." Either way, Trump is expected to immediately fire Smith when he enters office again, effectively ending both federal cases.
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