After Georgia’s high court rejected Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ effort to return to her election interference case, President Donald Trump called her a “criminal” who “should be prosecuted.”
“She should be put in jail; she’s a criminal; Fani Willis is a criminal,” Trump told reporters outside the White House before boarding Marine One for a trip to the U.K.
Georgia’s highest court declined to consider Willis’ appeal of her removal from the Georgia election interference case against Trump and others, but she said she disagreed with the court’s decision.
“Well, that was a great decision; it was a rigged case to start off with,” Trump told reporters. “It’s great. The court has ruled that she is a disaster.
“She’s a disaster with her boyfriend — the boyfriend that she paid $1 million for his expertise but he never did it before.”
Citing an “appearance of impropriety” created by a former romantic relationship Willis had with Nathan Wade, whom she had hired to lead the case, the Georgia Court of Appeals in December ruled Willis and her office could not continue prosecuting the case.
Fulton County records reportedly show Wade’s law firm was paid about $653,880 between November 2021 and October 2023 for his role in the election interference racketeering case.
“Willis’ misconduct during the investigation and prosecution of President Trump was egregious and she deserved nothing less than disqualification,” Steve Sadow, Trump’s attorney in the
Willis said she would direct her office to make the case file and evidence available to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia so it can appoint a new prosecutor to replace her.
“I hope that whoever is assigned to handle the case will have the courage to do what the evidence and the law demand,” Willis said in an emailed statement.
But, Trump, who has remarked at the White House he was “once the hunted, now he’s the hunter,” called Tuesday for Willis to be prosecuted.
Georgia case, said in a statement.
“Now she should be prosecuted,” Trump told reporters, adding for “what she did to people — forget about me — what Fani Willis did to innocent people, patriots that love our country, what she did to them by indicting them and destroying them.”
Newsmax reached out to the Fulton County District Attorney’s Media Relations Division for comment and has yet to hear back.
Willis in January asked the Georgia Supreme Court to review that ruling, and the high court Tuesday declined in a 4-3 decision to take up the case. One judge did not participate and one judge was disqualified.
That means it will be up to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council to find another prosecutor to take the case. That person could continue on the track that Willis has taken decide to pursue only some charges, or dismiss the case altogether. It could be difficult to find a prosecutor willing to take the case, given its complex nature and the resources required.
Even if a new prosecutor wants to continue on the path charted by Willis, it seems unlikely that Trump could be prosecuted now that he is the sitting president. But there are 14 other defendants who still face charges in the case.
A grand jury in Atlanta indicted Trump and 18 others in August 2023, using the state’s anti-racketeering law to accuse them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally try to overturn Trump’s narrow 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden in Georgia. The alleged scheme included Trump’s call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger urging him to investigate allegations of “outcome determinative” voter fraud. Four people have pleaded guilty.
The Georgia case was one of four criminal cases brought in 2023 against Trump. Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith abandoned two federal prosecutions after Trump won the November election. In his hush money case in New York, Trump was convicted on 34 counts but received a sentence of no punishment.
Willis had asked the Georgia high court to consider whether the lower appeals court was wrong to disqualify her “based solely upon an appearance of impropriety and absent a finding of an actual conflict of interest or forensic misconduct.”
She also asked the state Supreme Court to weigh whether the Court of Appeals erred “in substituting the trial court’s discretion with its own” in this case.
“No Georgia court has ever disqualified a district attorney for the mere appearance of impropriety without the existence of an actual conflict of interest,” Willis’ filing said. “And no Georgia court has ever reversed a trial court’s order declining to disqualify a prosecutor based solely on an appearance of impropriety.”
Lawyers for Trump had argued in a court filing that the lower appeals court got it right and that Willis’ “disqualification is mandated because it is the only remedy that could purge the taint of impropriety.”