CNN
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A Georgia appeals court has blocked an election interference conspiracy lawsuit against Donald Trump and several co-defendants, a major victory for the former president, who had been seeking to extend further legal challenges into 2025 if he doesn’t win all of his cases.
A new order filed Wednesday by the Georgia Court of Appeals is the latest sign that a Georgia state-level election interference case will not be tried before the 2024 presidential election. The court said the case will be on hold until a panel of judges rules on whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be disqualified.
The appeals court is expected to rule on the disbarment issue by March 2025, but a ruling could come sooner. Multiple sources close to the case told CNN that the timeline remains highly uncertain.
Fulton County Superior Judge Scott McAfee initially allowed the case to continue in his courtroom as he considered an appeals court’s decision to allow Willis’ case to continue.
A spokesman for Willis’ office said he could not comment on the appeals court’s order at this time. The district attorney can ask the appeals court to rule on the case quickly if necessary.
The appeals court’s decision underscores a string of successes for Trump’s long-standing strategy of putting prosecutors on the defensive, attacking them publicly and challenging them in court.
Trump and his co-defendants in the wide-ranging fraud case have sought to remove Willis from the case because of her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor hired to handle the case. They allege that Willis benefited financially from her relationship with Wade, who, according to the defense, paid for multiple vacations for the pair.
After a mini-trial in March in which lawyers for Trump and his co-defendants tried to prove their case against Willis and Wade, McAfee determined there was insufficient evidence to conclusively prove that Willis had financially benefited from the relationship.
Willis’ testimony in the televised trial drew attention to her personal life and distracted from the charges facing Trump and others in Georgia.
The judge ultimately decided that Willis could continue on the case if Wade resigned, and Wade subsequently resigned.
Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead lawyer in Georgia, said the sentence was appropriate.
“The Georgia Court of Appeals has properly stayed all trial court litigation against President Trump pending the ruling on an interlocutory appeal arguing that the case should be dismissed and that Fulton County District Attorney Willis should be disbarred for misconduct,” Sadow said in a statement.
In a brief speech to reporters on Wednesday night, Trump was asked if he had lost confidence in his legal team following the guilty verdict in his New York hush-money criminal trial. “No, it’s a rigged system, it’s a terrible system, in fact,” he replied.
“I think we’re doing very well. Big things happened in Georgia today,” the former president said.
Meanwhile, in Trump’s classified documents case in Florida, the federal judge overseeing the trial has shown a penchant for spending much of his courtroom time on Trump’s requests to question the authority of investigators and prosecutors.
Judge Eileen Cannon said Wednesday she remains open to holding a hearing to allow Trump to swear federal investigators under oath and for his defense team to question him, and said she would set aside a day and a half this month to hear prosecutors’ legality arguments.
Like the Georgia lawsuit, no trial date has been set for the Florida document lawsuit.
This story has been updated with additional details.
