Donald Trump’s lawyers believe they have sounded the death knell for Fani Willis

Donald Trump’s lawyers believe they have sounded the death knell for Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia.

In a new court filing Monday, Trump attorney Steven Sadow argued that Willis’ election interference case against the former president should be dismissed, in part because he believes Willis was biased against Trump.

The context

Willis, a Democrat, is leading the prosecution in the case, which alleges that Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, a swing state that narrowly supported President Joe Biden four years ago. Her investigation focuses on her call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which Trump urged him to “find” enough votes to swing the election in his favor, as well as an alleged plot to submit a fake slate of pro-Trump electors to the Electoral College.

Willis’ handling of the case has been scrutinized. She was criticized for a speech at an Atlanta church in January in which she suggested she had been targeted because of her race. Although Judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing the case, called the speech “inappropriate,” he said it was not enough to remove her from the case.

What we know

Sadow wrote that he had sounded Willis’ death knell, citing the opinion of former Georgia Supreme Court Justice Harold Nelson Hill, who he said would support dismissing the case.

“Prior to trial, the court must be attentive to the risk of prejudice to the defendant. I believe that a trial court should disqualify the state’s attorney if his continued presence in the case is likely to cause reasonable potential prejudice to the defendant,” Hill wrote.

“A reasonable risk of harm standard would rigorously protect defendants,” Hill continued. “It would not require proof of actual or probable harm. Instead, the trial court would focus on the possibility of an unfair trial. Yet this rule would place the burden on defendants to demonstrate a real, not an imagined, risk of harm.”

Hill’s opinion comes from a 1981 case. Sadow argued that the state improperly relied on a Georgia Supreme Court dissent in the 1988 case. Williams v. State.

“Here, even Hill’s pre-trial standard of ‘reasonable potential for harm’ is
“The appellants were easily dealt with,” Sadow wrote. “With slanderous national media coverage on every available network, the appellants showed that there was not only a ‘real chance,’ but a substantial probability, of unfair treatment at trial,” he wrote.

Views

Willis has not responded to the complaint. She has previously disputed the notion that her previous comments revealed bias against Trump.

In an earlier filing, her office wrote: “The district attorney did not express any personal opinion regarding the guilt of any defendant or discuss the merits of the pending case. She did not ‘mention the name of any defendant,’ or ‘address the merits of the offenses charged in an attempt to shift the trial itself into the court of public opinion.'”

Newsweek contacted Willis’ office by email for comment on Sadow’s filing.

And then?

It is not yet clear when or if a trial will take place, but the case is unlikely to be heard before the November presidential election.

Updated 8/26/24, 1:32 p.m. ET: This story has been updated with additional information and context.