Donald Trump's Appeal Chances Have Diminished: Legal Analyst

Former President Donald Trump might not be allowed to seek Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' removal from his Georgia election fraud case, a legal analyst said.

While strongly criticizing Willis for her relationship with Nathan Wade, the chief prosecutor in the case, Judge Scott McAfee issued an order on Friday that allowed either Willis or Wade to remain in the case. Wade resigned several hours later, allowing Willis to stay.

Trump pleaded not guilty to charges of interfering with the presidential election results in Georgia in 2020. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who was indicted with 18 others, has said the case is politically motivated.

If an appeals court removes Willis, it would almost certainly delay the case until after inauguration day in January 2025. If elected, Trump could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to delay the case until after he leaves the White House.

Georgia State University law professor Anthony Michael Kreis said that Trump's chances of being allowed to appeal Willis' continued involvement have dropped from almost certain to 50/50.

Kreis said that Trump's chances of an appeal diminished with McAfee's ruling on Friday.

"Before the ruling I was fairly confident that odds were overwhelming in favor of Judge McAfee granting the defendants an immediate appeal. Now, my sense is that it's 50/50," Kreis wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

In his ruling, McAfee criticized Willis for comments she made in an Atlanta church on Martin Luther King Day in January, when she suggested that Trump and his co-defendants were criticizing Wade and Willis because they are Black.

McAfee also criticized Willis for her "unprofessional" testimony during a two-day hearing last month following accusations that her relationship amounted to a conflict of interest. The timeline of their relationship emerged as a key point of contention.

In combative testimony while being questioned by an attorney for Trump's co-accused, Michael Roman, Willis denied that she hired Wade because she was in a relationship with him.

In an earlier order, McAfee indicated that he would allow an appeals court to review Willis' continued involvement in the case. To do so, he would have to grant a certificate to allow Trump and his co-defendants to take their review request to the appeals court.

However, in his ruling on Friday, McAfee said that Willis or Wade could stay and made no mention of granting a cert for appeal court review.