Georgia election case, once seen as strongest against Trump, hits the skids

ATLANTA — A blockbuster racketeering case that launched with a bang a little more than two years ago is seemingly ending with a whimper.

On Aug. 14, 2023, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was the picture of solemnity as she and her team walked to a lectern to announce they had secured charges against then-former President Donald Trump and 18 of his allies for taking part in a sweeping criminal enterprise to overturn the results of Georgia’s 2020 election.

“I make decisions in this office based on the facts and the law,” Willis told the assembled international media. “The law is completely nonpartisan. ... We look at the facts, we look at the law and we bring charges.”

For Willis, it all came to an abrupt halt last Tuesday when a divided Georgia Supreme Court declined to step in after a lower court removed her and her office from the case because of a romantic relationship between the DA and her former special prosecutor. Adding insult to injury, three of the justices suggested in their opinion that the outcome could have been different had Willis adopted a better legal strategy as she appealed.

The decision was a crushing blow to Willis, who a few short years ago was viewed as a rising national star and potential candidate for higher office. A personal, unforced error not only made her life tabloid fodder, but ripped from her grasp her highest-profile case, one her office had taken more than two years to painstakingly assemble.

“You can’t have a prosecution of this magnitude and not think that your behavior has be completely and entirely beyond reproach,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a Georgia State University constitutional law professor.

It’s not quite over. The case will soon be transferred to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, a nonpartisan state agency that steps in when a prosecutor is removed or has a conflict. Whomever the executive director appoints to replace Willis could decide to pick up where she left off, slim the case down or dismiss it entirely. What is clear: There is no guarantee Willis’ evidence will ever go before a jury.

That means some of the most contentious elements of Georgia’s 2020 election — some of which are still being fought over in party and election board meetings, in the Legislature and on cable TV — might never have their day in court.

“In a sense, the case could have gone a long way toward resolving some issues,” said former Gwinnett County DA Danny Porter, who has closely followed the case.

“The problem that I see is now neither side is satisfied,” he added. “The people who believe that Trump and the other co-defendants are innocent will continue to believe that they’re innocent and argue on that side. And the people who believe that he’s guilty will continue to believe that he’s guilty.”

A double-edged strategy?

Not long ago, Willis’ criminal case was seen as one of the strongest of the four Trump prosecutions.

The DA had Trump on tape pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” him enough votes to overturn the state’s presidential election results.

There was video of an IT team hired by a Trump-allied attorney being welcomed into Coffee County’s election office in South Georgia to copy sensitive voter data.

Trump surrogates had publicly accused a Fulton County election worker of fraud, and police bodycam footage showed some even appeared at her home.

Since the case involved state and not federal law, Trump couldn’t dismiss the case or pardon himself if convicted. And in Willis there was an unflinching veteran prosecutor — the first woman elected as Fulton’s DA — who wasn’t afraid to go after big targets.

Willis also had previous success using Georgia’s uniquely powerful Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act in the Atlanta public schools cheating case. And she had in her corner the private attorney who was widely seen as the state’s leading authority on the statute.

In the election interference case, the RICO law allowed Willis to tie together disparate events, including several that occurred outside Fulton or even the state of Georgia, and defendants, many of whom had never met, to tell a broader story. The 41-count indictment alleged the co-defendants “knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.”

Allies of the DA cheered her strategy, especially after four defendants quickly signed plea deals in the fall of 2023.

But using RICO also made the prosecution more complicated and resource-intensive, and it gave defense attorneys more avenues to exploit.

Defense attorney Doug Weinstein drew a straight line between Willis’ decision to use RICO with the public disclosure of her romantic relationship with onetime deputy Nathan Wade.

He said had she not cast such a wide net and brought charges against so many people, there likely wouldn’t have been as many defense attorneys working on the case, such as Ashleigh Merchant, who first exposed the relationship and argued it represented a conflict of interest that tainted the case.

“But for Ashleigh Merchant, this issue with Nathan Wade probably wouldn’t have been raised. It very well might not have come to light,” said Weinstein, who represented one of the defendants in the lengthy “Young Slime Life” RICO case brought by Willis’ office in 2022.

Georgia State’s Kreis said there are more straightforward laws in Georgia’s election code Willis could have brought charges under. The defendants potentially could have been tried faster, but those charges wouldn’t carry penalties nearly as stiff as Georgia’s RICO laws.

Willis has remained unapologetic about her conduct in the case and said she did nothing wrong regarding her relationship with Wade, who resigned from his position in March 2024 after the trial judge gave the DA’s office an ultimatum.

During a dramatic hearing in February 2024, during which deeply personal details about her dating and personal life were carried live on cable news, Willis accused defense attorneys of lying about the relationship to try and derail the election case.

“I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial,” Willis told Merchant at the time.

When the state Supreme Court declined to get involved this week, Willis bowed out, saying in a written statement that she disagreed with the court’s decision but respected the legal process and the courts.

“I hope that whoever is assigned to handle the case will have the courage to do what the evidence and the law demand,” Willis said.

A Willis spokesman declined to comment further for this story.

Charlie Bailey, a former Fulton prosecutor and close Willis ally who now chairs the Democratic Party of Georgia, said the closely divided court made a bad call. He said Willis’ relationship with Wade did not pose a conflict of interest.

Now Bailey hopes the case’s next prosecutor will make decisions “based on the evidence and the law.” He said it’s still a strong case.

“It has nothing to do with the substance of why this case exists,” Bailey said of the Willis-Wade controversy. “It’s the strongest case because of what (the defendants) did.”

Other impacts

Roswell defense attorney Josh Schiffer, who is unaffiliated with the case, blamed Willis’ personal choices for the collapse of “the most important case, arguably, in the history of Fulton County.”

“Absent the Nathan Wade personal relationship issue, I don’t see any barriers that would have prevented a very strong prosecution,” he said.

Nonetheless, he does not expect Willis to pay a price at the ballot box in heavily Democratic Fulton County.

Indeed, months after the Wade relationship came to light, Willis easily bested primary and general election challengers to secure a second term.

But she could be facing investigations for months — maybe even years — to come. Critics, including state GOP Chairman Josh McKoon, are calling for the U.S. Department of Justice and other entities to investigate the DA.

A special state Senate committee and the U.S. House Judiciary Committee are also still looking into her conduct.

And if the replacement prosecutor ultimately appointed by PAC decides to kill the election case, Fulton taxpayers will be on the hook to pay millions in legal fees to Trump and other defendants under a new state law.

There could also be courtroom implications. Some legal observers worry a lack of clarity surrounding what constitutes an appearance of a conflict of interest could lead to defendants in other cases trying to remove their prosecutors.

“We used to have a bright line” for removing prosecutors from a case, said Porter, the former Gwinnett DA. “It used to be related to a party or a financial interest, and that was the only legal reason to ask for a prosecutor to be recused. Now we have this amorphous standard that is much more difficult to apply ... and that’s unfortunate.”

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(Atlanta Journal-Constitution staff writers Shaddi Abusaid and Jozsef Papp contributed to this article.)

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