It’s a banner day for Donald Trump, if not for Americans who’d like to see election crimes from the last cycle punished before we head back into the voting booth again. First Judge Cannon made it official in the Florida stolen documents case, setting a trial date of never, does never work for you? And now the Georgia Court of Appeals has granted Trump’s interlocutory appeal of the decision to let prosecutors in Atlanta stay on the election interference case.
In March, Judge Scott McAfee castigated Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for her “tremendous lapse in judgment” in entering into a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the outside prosecutor she hired to shepherd the prosecution of Donald Trump and his co-conspirators in their effort to steal the state’s 16 electoral votes for Donald Trump. Trump also argued that DA Willis’s speech on MLK weekend at a historically black church in which she likened the plaintiffs’ recusal motion to playing the race card amounted to “forensic misconduct.”
The trial judge ruled that her office could stay on the case as long as Wade resigned. Which he did, post haste, although he emerged this week to say that “workplace romances are as American as apple pie.”
“It happens to everyone. But it happened to the two of us,” he gabbled to ABC News.
On March 29, Judge McAfee gave Trump a window to appeal by granting his petition for a certificate of review, allowing him and his co-defendants to make their case immediately to the Georgia Court of Appeals that the case should be dismissed, or at least that the FCDA Office should be tossed off the case entirely.
This morning the appellate court granted the former president’s petition for interlocutory appeal, dooming the prospect that this case will get underway in 2024. Worse still, under O.C.G.A. 5-6-34(d), “all judgments, rulings, or orders rendered in the case which are raised on appeal and which may affect the proceedings below shall be reviewed and determined by the appellate court, without regard to the appealability of the judgment, ruling, or order standing alone[.]” So Trump and his minions can now lard up the appeal with dozens of issues already ruled on below, dragging this thing out even longer, and crossing their fingers that the appeals panel will overrule the trial court and bollix this case for good.
In the normal course of events, a grant of interlocutory appeal would stay the proceedings below. But here, Judge McAfee noted that he “intends to continue addressing the many other unrelated pending pretrial motions, regardless of whether the petition is granted within 45 days of filing, and even if any subsequent appeal is expedited by the appellate court.”
The appeals panel should be named within the next two weeks, after which we’ll find out whether the trial judge will be allowed to continue his work. But clearly this case is going to be delayed for months because of the DA’s decision to enter into a romantic relationship with her direct report.
“This was the foreseeable result of a cascade of bad decisions,” Georgia defense attorney Andrew Fleischman told ATL, calling it “an enduring testament to Atlanta’s ability to blow a huge lead in the second half.”
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
