BREAKING: Georgia case against Trump paused until after appeal to remove Fani Willis is heard

Fulton County DA Fani Willis' RICO case against Donald Trump has been stayed until after the presidential election. The Georgia Court of Appeals has put a stay on the case until such time as the court resolves whether or not Willis will be permitted to stay on the case. Willis faces that hearing in October. This could mean that the case is held until after the presidential election only a month later.

Willis' case against Trump and 15 other co-defendants alleges that they conspired to overturn the 2020 election results. However, it was revealed after the indictments against the then-19 co-defendants, four of whom have pleaded out, that Willis herself was romantically involved with a prosecutor who she brought onto the case. Trump and the others remaining on the case have pleaded not guilty.

The court must now resolve whether or not Willis can stay on the case. In their order, the court wrote "The proceedings below in the Superior Court of Fulton County are hereby stayed pending the outcome of these appeals." The appeal was brought by defendants Michael Roman, David Shafer, Robert Cheely, Mark Meadows, Donald Trump, Cathleen Latham, Rudy Giuliani, Jeff Clark and Harrison Floyd.

The Court of Appeals in Georgia has determined that they will hear the appeal to remove Willis from the case in October. "We look forward to presenting arguments before Judges Brown, Markle, and Land on why this case should be dismissed and Fulton County DA Willis should be disqualified for the trial court’s acknowledged ‘odor of mendacity’ misconduct in violation of the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct," Trump's attorny Steven Sadow said.

Willis admitted to having an affiar with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, who she hired to aid the prosecution of Trump and the co-defendants. A previous court decision by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee had allowed her to stay on the case so long as Wade was removed from it, which he was. In addition to the romantic impropriety, financial misdeeds have been alleged regarding travel, meals, and other adventures Willis and Wade embarked upon.

"This finding is by no means an indication that the Court condones this tremendous lapse in judgment or the unprofessional manner of the District Attorney’s testimony during the evidentiary hearing. Rather, it is the undersigned’s opinion that Georgia law does not permit the finding of an actual conflict for simply making bad choices — even repeatedly — and it is the trial court’s duty to confine itself to the relevant issues and applicable law properly brought before it," McAfee said at the time.

Trump was recently found guilty of 34 counts of felony falsification of business records in New York City after having recorded payments made to his attorney in 2017 as legal fees in bookkeeping records. New York DA Alvin Bragg alleges that the 2017 payments were evidence of 2016 election interference at a state level, although the election in contention was at the federal level.