# Fani Willis **Fani Willis** is the District Attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, in office since January 2021. She brought the broadest criminal case ever assembled against the effort to overturn the 2020 election — and then lost it, not on the merits, but on a conflict-of-interest finding about her own conduct. She remains Fulton County DA. She was **re-elected in November 2024** to a four-year term while the case she could no longer prosecute was still pending, and was still in office through 2026. ## The case In August 2023 Willis obtained a 41-count racketeering indictment against [[Donald Trump]] and 18 co-defendants for the attempt to reverse Georgia's 2020 result — the [[Fake Electors Scheme]], the call to [[Brad Raffensperger]], the Coffee County equipment breach and the rest, charged as a single enterprise under the [[RICO Act]]. The case itself is tracked at [[Trump Georgia RICO Case]]; the prosecutorial theory at [[Georgia RICO Case]]. This page is the person. ## The disqualification Willis had appointed **Nathan Wade** as special prosecutor to lead the case. In January 2024 a defence motion revealed that the two had been in a personal relationship. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee held evidentiary hearings and ruled on **March 15, 2024** that the relationship was not a legal conflict of interest but created a "significant appearance of impropriety"; either Willis or Wade had to go. Wade resigned the next day. That remedy did not hold. On appeal: | Date | Action | |---|---| | **December 19, 2024** | The Georgia Court of Appeals, 2–1, disqualified **Willis and her entire office** from the prosecution, holding McAfee's remedy insufficient | | **September 16, 2025** | The Georgia Supreme Court declined to hear her appeal, 4–3, making the removal permanent | | **November 14, 2025** | Peter Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys' Council of Georgia, appointed himself after every district attorney he approached declined the case | | **November 26, 2025** | Skandalakis moved to dismiss; Judge McAfee dismissed the case in its entirety the same day | The substance of the indictment was never tested. No defendant successfully argued the 41 counts lacked evidentiary support; the case died on the prosecutor's disqualification and her replacement's judgment that it was no longer viable. That sequence is why Willis appears in the vault's [[Elite Impunity]] material — she is the clearest case of an accountability effort defeated by a procedural vulnerability in the prosecutor rather than by a defence on the facts. ## The afterlife of the Wade story — September 2026 Nearly two years after the disqualification, the Willis–Wade relationship resurfaced as the premise of a fabricated conspiracy claim in the U.S. Senate. On **September 29, 2026**, [[Eric Schmitt]] used a [[Senate Judiciary Committee]] hearing to accuse former special counsel [[Jack Smith]] of perjury for allegedly meeting Willis and Wade at an Atlanta Hawks game on February 3, 2024 — the day after their relationship became public. Smith had in fact been at a University of Maryland–University of Iowa basketball game; the "Hawks" were the Hawkeyes. Smith testified he had never met either Willis or Wade, and no evidence to the contrary was produced. The point for this page is that Willis's name now functions as a free-standing prop in that material, detached from anything she did. See [[Eric Schmitt]] for the episode. > [!warning] Scope of this page > This page records adjudicated outcomes — court rulings, election results, filed motions — and documented public statements. It does not relitigate the conduct findings beyond what the courts held. ## See Also - [[Trump Georgia RICO Case]] — the case, its counts, and its dismissal - [[Georgia RICO Case]] — the enterprise theory she built - [[Nathan Wade]] — the special prosecutor she appointed - [[Brad Raffensperger]] — the official on the other end of the Trump call she charged - [[Stop the Steal]] — the operation the indictment mapped - [[Elite Impunity]] — the pattern the dismissal completed - [[Eric Schmitt]] — the 2026 Senate hearing that revived the Wade story as fabrication