(NewsWorthy.news) – The District Attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, will be the center of an appeal hearing in October that will decide if she will be removed from the 2020 election interference case featuring former president Donald Trump as a lead defendant.
Fani Willis is overseeing the infamous trial against the former president and 17 other co-conspirators who allegedly interfered with the results of the 2020 presidential election, when Democrat Joe Biden claimed victory over his predecessor.
On Monday June 3, a Georgia appellate court agreed to hear a request to remove Willis from the case. The October 2024 hearing was scheduled months after the district attorney was found to have been romantically involved with Nathan Wade.
In March, Judge Scott McAfee of the Fulton County Superior Court mandated that either Wade, a special prosecutor in the trial, or Willis step down from the case. Though Wade resigned, Trump’s attorneys filed an appeal to have the district attorney removed as well. A tentative hearing for the appeal is set for October 4, postponing the trial until after the highly anticipated 2024 presidential election on November 5, which is a presumed rematch between Trump and Biden.
At the time of the ruling, McAfee declared that there was not an “actual conflict” unless Willis obtained money through her romantic relationship with Wade. He criticized it as a “tremendous lapse in judgment” but not a violation of Georgia law. The plan to hear the Willis removal appeal comes a week after Trump was convicted of all 34 felony counts against him in New York, which allege he falsified business documents to hide his own romantic affair before the 2016 election.
In Georgia, the former president faces several more felony counts related to conspiracy and racketeering. These charges were brought as part of a larger investigation into Trump and a number of his allies who were suspected of election interference in 2020. Four of the 18 defendants in the case have entered a plea of guilty.
However, Trump and a few others—including Mark Meadows, former Chief of Staff at the White House, and Rudy Giuliani—have pleaded not guilty to the 41 counts outlined in the indictment.
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