Georgia AG encourages state’s top court to not hear Fani Willis appeal

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr (R) encouraged the state’s top court to not take up Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s (D) appeal of a ruling disqualifying her from criminally prosecuting President-elect Trump. 

“Lawfare has become far too common in American politics, and it must end. As such, I would encourage the Georgia Supreme Court to not take her appeal,” Carr said in a statement posted to the social platform X. 

The Georgia Court of Appeals, the state’s intermediate court, in a ruling earlier this month disqualified Willis and her office from the prosecution over the district attorney’s romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, a top prosecutor she hired for the case. Once Wade stepped aside, the trial court had allowed Willis to move forward.

Willis is now appealing to the Georgia Supreme Court, hoping to revive her ability to prosecute Trump and more than a dozen of his allies for entering an alleged months-long criminal conspiracy to unlawfully overturn the results of President Biden’s 2020 victory. 

Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead defense attorney in Georgia, applauded Carr’s statement, calling the case a “one-time situation” that doesn’t meet the state Supreme Court's criteria for granting review. 

“AG Carr is right,” Sadow wrote on X. 

Though Willis has been disqualified, Trump’s Georgia charges are not yet officially dismissed. If the court doesn’t take the case, a nonpartisan stage agency would take over and have several options for how to proceed, including dropping the charges. 

Trump has separately argued his Georgia charges must be dismissed now that he is president-elect. His election similarly led to the dismissal of his two federal criminal prosecutions, and Trump has a pending effort to dismiss his New York criminal case that stems from a 2016 hush money payment.