Defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant predicts that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will continue to face consequences following her disqualification from the Georgia case against President-elect Donald Trump.
Merchant, who represented Trump co-defendant Mike Roman and brought the initial motion to recuse Willis, said she expects the incoming administration’s Department of Justice to open an investigation into the DA.
‘They fought every single step we took.’
Merchant filed a motion in January to dismiss and disqualify Willis over her affair with the special prosecutor in the case, Nathan Wade.
The motion accused Willis of having “an improper, clandestine personal relationship during the pendency of this case, which has resulted in the special prosecutor, and, in turn, the district attorney, profiting significantly from this prosecution at the expense of the taxpayers.”
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee previously determined that the affair created an “appearance of impropriety,” forcing Wade to resign.
On Thursday, an appeals court found that Wade stepping down from the case failed to “address the appearance of impropriety.”
As a result, the court disqualified Willis but upheld the indictment against Trump and his co-defendants.
“It’s kind of like Christmas came early,” Merchant told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “We had to fight for a hearing. We had to fight for subpoenas. We had to fight for evidence. We had to fight to call witnesses.”
“I mean, they fought every single step we took,” she added.
Merchant told the news outlet that she anticipates Trump’s DOJ will probe Willis over her conduct.
“I would be shocked if she wasn’t investigated by the new Justice Department,” she said.
The court’s decision to uphold the charges means the case could be tried in another county.
However, former President George W. Bush Justice Department official John Yoo told Fox News that this is unlikely to happen and predicted the case would be dismissed or suspended.
“There’s such an appearance of impropriety, an appearance of a conflict of interest that Fani Willis should not be the prosecutor,” Yoo said. “I think this spells yet another case that’s going to have to either be suspended or, more likely, just ended and tossed out. It’s hard for me to see another Georgia district attorney wanting to take up this flawed case and try to prosecute Trump on these theories that his re-election campaign was some kind of criminal organized crime enterprise.”
MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade similarly predicted the case would be dismissed, calling Willis’ disqualification “a terrible blow to the prosecution.”
McQuade stated that she expects Willis will try to appeal her recusal to the Georgia Supreme Court.
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