Trump's delay-delay-delay strategy is paying off
A Georgia appeals court agreed to weigh Donald Trump's effort to get the DA overseeing the state's election-interference case against him removed.
Win McNamee/Pool via REUTERS
- A Georgia appeals court has given Donald Trump a legal win in the state's election-interference case against him.
- The appeals court agreed to consider Trump's bid to get the DA removed from the case.
- Trump scored another legal win Tuesday when a federal judge delayed his classified documents trial indefinitely.
Former President Donald Trump has scored another legal win that will likely delay one of his criminal trials.
A Georgia appeals court on Wednesday agreed to consider Trump's bid to get Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis disqualified from the state's 2020 election-interference case against Trump and his allies.
Trump and his codefendants in the Georgia case had asked the appeals court to review a ruling made earlier this year by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee that permitted Willis to continue to oversee the case.
Attorneys for Trump and his codefendants had previously argued in a motion to disqualify Willis that Willis had a conflict of interest in the case because she improperly benefited from a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the Atlanta lawyer she hired as a special prosecutor for the case.
Following a days-long evidentiary hearing on the matter in which both Willis and Wade testified, McAfee ruled in March that Willis and her office could remain on the case so long as Wade stepped aside. Wade announced his resignation hours later.
McAfee said in his ruling that though he did not find a real conflict of interest, "an odor of mendacity remains." The judge allowed a request by Trump and his codefendant's to appeal the ruling.
Trump attorney Steve Sadow cheered the Georgia appeals courts' decision to take up the case, writing in a post on X on Wednesday: "The GA Court of Appeals has GRANTED President Trump's Application for Interlocutory Appeal from the trial court's order refusing to disqualify Fulton County DA Fani Willis!!!"
The case was not scheduled for trial. In the months leading up to the filing of the conflict-of-interest motion, Willis had been seeking an August trial date — but that was before her office lost its lead prosecutor on the case.
The appeals court's decision to review the ruling just increases the likelihood that the Georgia case against Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, won't go to trial before the presidential election in November.
Trump — who has been charged in a total of four criminal cases and is currently standing trial for one of them, in relation to hush money paid to a porn star — got another legal victory on Tuesday.
The federal Florida judge overseeing Trump's criminal case over his holding onto secret government documents following his presidency delayed the trial indefinitely, giving him the chance to get rid of the charges if he wins the 2024 election.
The former president's legal team has been trying to delay Trump's criminal cases — and the strategy seems to be paying off.