Fani Willis disqualified from prosecuting Donald Trump in Georgia election case after affair bombshell

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was disqualified from the Donald Trump election interference prosecution, striking a potentially lethal blow to the case.

Willis will not be allowed to remain on the case due to her sensational affair with fellow prosecutor Nathan Wade, who stepped down from his post, which she attempted to cover up. 

Ruling in a 2-1 opinion, the Georgia appeals court said she was ‘wholly disqualified from this case,’ and pointed to ‘a significant appearance of impropriety.’

MAGA faithful immediately chimed in on the news saying that she should be barred from practicing law in the future.

‘Fani Willis should be disbarred for abusing her power and weaponizing her office to go after her political enemies,’ wrote Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on X.

Byron Donalds, R-Fla., said the ‘political weaponization of our institutions MUST END’ in reaction. 

And Charlie Kirk, founder of MAGA-aligned Turning Point USA, called it a ‘huge legal victory for not only President Trump but all of the co-defendants who were targeted alongside him.’ 

The ruling overturns Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee’s decision that allowed Willis and her team to remain on the Trump case despite the affair as long as Wade left his job as Willis’ lead prosecutor.

In his ruling McAfee did point to an ‘odor of mendacity’ around the case in light of the stunning revelations.

The latest ruling did not toss out the case itself, although the decision raises barriers that legal experts immediately called potentially terminal.

Another team of prosecutors would have to come in from another county to bring the case, at a time when the other criminal cases against Trump have collapsed after his election to the presidency.

‘It’s not coming back. It’s over,’ said CNN legal commentator Elie Honig immediately after the news broke. 

‘The remedy crafted by the trial court to prevent an ongoing appearance of impropriety did nothing to address the appearance of impropriety that existed at time when DA Willis was exercising her broad pretrial discretion about who to prosecute and what charges to bring,’ the court ruled. 

The court called it ‘the rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings.’ 

The decision is just the latest legal break going Trump’s way. In November, Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought a similar federal election interference case in Washington, D.C. , moved to have that case dropped. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan soon agreed. 

Trump regularly mocked and attacked Willis throughout the Georgia case.

The prosecution is what brought Trump’s infamous mugshot after he was first charged – something Trump soon used to advantage by marketing it on his campaign website.

A grand jury charged Trump and 18 co-defendants in August 2023 of violating the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act as part of the election overturn effort.

The 98-page indictment charged efforts to pressure election workers and featured Trump’s infamous phone call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asking him to ‘find 11,780 votes.’

But the case soon took a stunning U-turn, after defense lawyers uncovered stunning evidence that Willis and Wade had been carrying on an affair.

Willis herself stormed into the courtroom during an evidentiary hearing to defend herself.

The court was soon reviewing texts and documentation that established their affair as well as out-of-town trips. 

Lawyer Ashleigh Merchant, who first brought forth the astonishing affair allegations while representing Trump co-defendant Mike Roman, told DailyMail.com: ‘We are very pleased the court of appeals agreed with Mr. Roman and the other defendants that Ms. Willis should not have been allowed to prosecute this case.’

‘We regret that Ms. Willis did not do the right thing and voluntarily recuse herself when Mr. Roman raised the issue because failing to do so put Judge McAfee in an untenable position. This failure of judgment is the exact reason Mr. Roman was forced to move to disqualify her in the first place, so we are thankful that the court agreed she should not be allowed to prosecute this case any further.’ 

Normally mundane evidentiary hearings in the case were broadcast on national cable news, as lawyers for Trump and his co-defendants established how Willis and Wade shared expenses on trips.

Even her father John Clifford Floyd III flew in from California to testify about how he had schooled his daughter early in life to always keep cash in the house. 

The affair provided fuel for Trump and his allies to cast the case as part of a ‘witch hunt’ against him, along with a hush money case in New York, the election interference case in D.C., and the Florida case where he was charged with taking national security documents from the White House. 

The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee summoned Wade to provide closed-door testimony about the case and the affair in October.