After Donald Trump’s presidential victory, special counsel Jack Smith started taking apparent steps toward winding down his two federal criminal cases. Proceedings in the New York state hush money case were postponed for a week to give Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg time to tell the court how his office wants to proceed in the president-elect’s case (Bragg has a Tuesday deadline).
Now in Georgia state court, we have a cancellation in the fourth case in which Trump was criminally charged. A pretrial appellate hearing set for Dec. 5 in the defense effort to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was canceled Monday by the state appeals court “until further order of this court.”
Unlike the other three criminal cases, where delays were explicitly in response to Trump’s election, the Georgia court hasn’t provided a public rationale for its latest move. Indeed, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the cancellation “took many attorneys involved in the appeal by surprise.”
The appeals court may have decided that it doesn’t need oral argument to rule and so it’s unnecessary to hold a hearing before doing so. If that’s the reason, then it would be the opposite of a delay if the court winds up ruling sooner than it otherwise would have. It’s also possible that the court wants to figure out how to proceed in the case since one party is now the president-elect.
The Georgia case is different from most of Trump’s other criminal cases in that he has multiple co-defendants in Georgia, so the appeal and any eventual trials (if the case proceeds after the appeal) can still proceed against those co-defendants who haven’t gained a legal windfall by winning political office.
Another difference is that the appeal was pressed by Trump and his co-defendants, as opposed to the New York state case, which was headed toward sentencing; the federal election interference case, where pretrial proceedings were moving forward; and the classified documents case, where Smith was appealing its dismissal. Whatever the reason(s) for the latest move in Georgia, a relatively slight timing shift might not make a huge difference ultimately to Trump personally, if that’s what this winds up being. Even if Willis wins the appeal and stays on the case, Trump wasn’t going to be tried while he’s in office anyway. Presidents can’t pardon state cases or get them dismissed. The Georgia appeals court’s next move, whatever that might be, should signal where the case is headed. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in Donald Trump’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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