Another blow has been dealt to Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis, who was prohibited from litigating the lawsuit she filed against President Donald Trump.
Forbes said that Willis was pulled from the case after it was revealed that she had appointed her partner, Nathan Wade, as the chief prosecutor. Willis had started pursuing the case against the president and eighteen other defendants on allegations that they tried to rig the 2020 election.
Senate Bill 244, which was approved by the state senate, would mandate that the state’s taxpayers recompense defendants in situations where the prosecutor has been disqualified. Republican Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed the bill into law on Wednesday.
According to Forbes, the governor’s approval of the bill “represents a major turning point in holding unethical, opportunistic, and deceitful prosecutors accountable for their misconduct.” Sadow is the lawyer who has represented Trump in the case.
According to the law, criminal defendants are “entitled to an award of all reasonable attorney’s fees and costs incurred” in the event that the accusations against them are dropped and the prosecutor in charge of the case is disqualified for misconduct.
According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sen. Bradley Beach, the Georgia legislator who introduced the bill, claimed that the Trump case inspired him.
The allegations against the president must be dropped, which hasn’t happened yet, before he can get paid back for any of the $4.2 million in legal expenses he paid for the case.
The Georgia Supreme Court has not yet determined whether to hear Willis’ appeal of her dismissal.
Willis said in her appeal from January: “No Georgia court has ever disqualified a district attorney for the mere appearance of impropriety without the existence of an actual conflict of interest.”
In December, Willis was taken out of the case against Trump by the appeals court.
The court’s decision, as Fox News reported, gave Willis and the assistant DAs in her office “no authority to proceed,” but it did not go so far as to completely dismiss Trump’s charge.
According to court filings, Willis was forced to pay more than $54,000 in legal expenses in March for breaching Georgia’s Open Records Act.
The conflict started when defense lawyer Ashleigh Merchant, who represents Michael Roman, a former campaign and White House staffer to President Donald Trump, asked Willis’ office to produce certain documents. According to Newsweek, Roman and Trump were charged in the Georgia election tampering case, which Willis filed in 2023 and is still pending.
The site went on to say that the decision is yet another blow to Fani Willis’s case against Trump and the other defendants.
The case against Trump and 18 other co-defendants, who are charged with plotting to thwart Joe Biden’s 2020 Georgia victory, was dismissed from Willis’ prosecution in December. Trump has refuted the allegations and charged Willis with carrying out an attack with political motivations.
Due to the “appearance of impropriety” resulting from Willis’ prior contact with Nathan Wade, a former special prosecutor on the case, the Georgia Court of Appeals determined that disqualification was required. In October, Wade was compelled to step down.
In January, Willis appealed the court’s decision to disqualify her “based solely upon an appearance of impropriety and absent a finding of an actual conflict of interest or forensic misconduct.”
The DA’s office had been “openly hostile” to Merchant’s requests for documents, the judge concluded in the court order, adding that they were “handled differently than other requests.” This, the judge continued, showed a “lack of good faith.”
