A Georgia appeals court agreed Wednesday to review a lower court's ruling allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to continue prosecuting the election interference case she brought against former President Donald Trump.
Trump and others charged in the case sought to have Willis and her office removed from the case, claiming that her romantic relationship with special counsel Nathan Wade created a conflict of interest.
In March, Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee found there was no conflict of interest that would require Willis to drop the case, but granted Trump and the other defendants' request to appeal to the Georgia Court of Appeals.
That intermediate appeals court agreed Wednesday to take the case. Once it issues its ruling, the losing party could ask the Georgia Supreme Court to consider an appeal.
The appeals court's decision to consider the case is likely to cause a delay in the case and reduce the chance that he will be tried before the November general election, when Trump is expected to be the Republican presidential nominee.
In his decision, McAfee said he planned to continue addressing other pretrial motions “regardless of whether the motion is granted and even whether the appeals court facilitates a subsequent appeal,” but Trump and the others may ask the Court of Appeals to stay the case while the appeal is pending.
McAfee wrote in his ruling in March that the legal process was “fraught with the appearance of impropriety.” He said Willis could remain on the case only if Wade dropped it, and the special counsel tendered his resignation hours later.
Allegations that Willis had improperly benefited from her affair with Wade led to a tumultuous couple of months in the case, as intimate details of Willis and Wade's personal lives were aired in court in mid-February. The serious accusations in one of the four criminal proceedings against the former Republican president were overshadowed by the love lives of prosecutors.
Trump and 18 others were charged in August with participating in a broad plot to illegally try to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden in Georgia.
