CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elie Honig said during a network segment on Wednesday that former President Donald Trump’s so-called ‘election interference’ case in Georgia isn’t going to happen before the election and may never happen.
Honig’s observations came on the heels of a ruling by the Georgia Court of Appeals that it was indefinitely pausing the case brought by controversial and compromised Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis last year.
“It’s over, let’s be realistic. It’s not happening before the 2024 election, it’s not happening in 2024, and it’s maybe not happening at all,” Honig began.
“Now look, the appeals court, we can never predict what they are going to do. There are some things that we know for sure: one, they didn’t have to take this case, the appeal, and they chose to. The other thing is, they didn’t have to pause the district court, in fact, the trial court judge when he issued his ruling allowing Donald Trump and others to ask the appeals court to take this case,” he added.
“The trial court judge specified that while you are all doing that, I am going to continue to holding proceedings, and now today, just a couple hours ago, the appeals court said, ‘no, no, no pause that.’ So that tells me they are taking this appeal very serious, and if Donald Trump and the defendants win this appeal, this case is essentially toast,” he added.
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Despite his previous finding of “a significant appearance of impropriety” in her actions, Judge Scott McAfee ruled in March that Willis could stay on the case if she dismissed special prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom she was seeing romantically and allegedly benefitted financially from his appointment. Defendants in the case immediately sought review of McAfee’s ruling after it was issued, arguing that the issue was “of the utmost importance to this case.”
“President Trump looks forward to presenting interlocutory arguments to the Georgia Court of Appeals as to why the case should be dismissed and Fulton County DA Willis should be disqualified for her misconduct in this unjustified, unwarranted political persecution,” Trump’s lead defense counsel Steve Sadow said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller.
McAfee’s ruling raised “reasonable questions” about the veracity of the testimonies from Willis and Wade regarding when their relationship started. Both claimed it began in 2022, after Wade’s appointment, but a long-time friend of Willis testified that it actually started in 2019.
Defendants argued that simply disqualifying Wade was “is insufficient to cure the appearance of impropriety the Court has determined exists.” They argued that the appeal of the matter should not be delayed until after any trial.
“As noted, should such review not occur until after any trial in this case and these decisions were ultimately reversed on appeal, such reversal would likely require the retrial of every convicted defendant without any additional showing of error or prejudice,” the defendants argued.
