DA Fani Willis appeals her disqualification from Trump’s Georgia election interference case
Megan Varner for The Washington Post via Getty Images
(ATLANTA) — Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Wednesday filed an appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court asking them to reverse her disqualification from the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump and others.
The Georgia Court of Appeals last month disqualified Willis from her prosecution of Trump and his co-defendants due to a “significant appearance of impropriety,” leaving the question of who takes over the case — and whether it continues — to the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia.
In her filing Wednesday, Willis argued that the appeals court “erred” when it disqualified her from the case based only on the appearance of a conflict of interest, which stemmed from her relationship with a prosecutor on the case.
“No Georgia court has ever disqualified a district attorney for the mere appearance of impropriety without the existence of an actual conflict of interest,” the filing stated, asking the higher court to review the decision.
The filing also claimed the lower court’s opinion was an “overreach” and “created a new standard for disqualification” that it did not have the authority to enact.
“The opinion ignored precedent and created a new, mechanical standard for disqualification uniquely applicable to public prosecutors, usurping authority properly reserved to this Court while ensuring confusion and uncertainty to follow,” the filing stated.
Trump and 18 others pleaded not guilty last year to all charges in a sweeping racketeering indictment for alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia. Four defendants subsequently took plea deals in exchange for agreeing to testify against other defendants.
The case has been on pause while Trump and his co-defendants have pursued Willis’ disqualification.
(MONTVALE, NJ) — A school bus carrying 31 passengers overturned and landed on its side in New Jersey on Monday, sending at least 13 to the hospital.
The crash occurred on the side of the Garden State Parkway in Montvale, according to New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.
Montvale Mayor Mike Ghassali said in a post on Facebook that no one died in the incident, and the individual with the most severe of injuries has a pulse.
The bus was headed from Lakewood, New Jersey to New York State when it overturned just south of Exit 172 around 7:30 p.m., according to the mayor.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(LOS ANGELES) — Los Angeles residents who fled devastating wildfires are facing a huge recovery and rebuilding effort, as they gather what they can from ruins that were once their homes.
As firefighters continue a massive effort to contain and subdue the historic infernos, Angelenos are grappling with unthinkable loss.
Mike Geller and his 18-year-old son spoke with ABC News among the rubble of Palisades Village, where their family’s 50-year-old jewelry business once stood.
“My family has been doing jewelry servicing of the community for almost three generations,” Geller explained as he pointed to the school next door. “My mother ran this business prior to me, when I was going to elementary school here.”
Now 48, Geller said he’s facing the reality of being forced to start over completely. His business — Jaimie Geller Jewelry — his home, car, truck, motorcycle and the personal belongings of his family of five all burned in the Palisades Fire.
“Thank God I was able to retrieve my birth certificate,” he said. “But every possession my children have accumulated… gone, decimated.”
“I’m in shock,” Geller added. “I’m not even sure how I’m talking to you. I’m absolutely in shock. I’m just going through the motions. It hasn’t really set in yet.”
Geller filed personal insurance claims, though he said he has no clue when any of them will be processed.
Geller said he and many of the older people in the Palisades don’t have the means to wait months — if not years — and rebuild.
“There are people on the Alphabet Streets who bought their homes for $75,000, $50,000,” Geller said. “Those people will not be able to come back. And if they do and they have insurance, will they rebuild? Look, if I’m 75, 80 years old… how much time do I have?”
“It’s about quality of life,” he continued. “If it takes me three years to rebuild, how much more time do I actually have left at that point?”
The Palisades Fire that consumed Geller’s home and business is still burning. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said the blaze was at 23,713 acres with only 14% containment as of Monday morning.
The Eaton Fire north of Pasadena — at 14,117 acres and 33% containment — is also still raging, as is the Hurst Fire near San Fernando, which is now 799 acres in size though 89% contained.
More than 12,000 structures are believed to have been damaged or destroyed, with at least 24 people killed. About 105,000 people remain under mandatory evacuation orders and another 87,000 are under evacuation warnings as of Monday morning.
A preliminary damage estimate by AccuWeather put the economic losses so far between $135 billion and $150 billion, which would put the fires among the costliest natural disasters in American history. High winds forecast through Wednesday threaten to spread the fires further.
Geller’s family and many others are now trying to piece together a plan, even as the smoke from the wildfires hangs heavy over their ravaged neighborhood.
“My wife and I are even considering whether or not we rebuild, really, but at this point with the insurance companies, it’s a smoother transaction,” Geller said. “It’s a smoother road if you rebuild.”
In the meantime, he’s staying in a hotel. Fire victims here are in desperate need of affordable housing, according to Geller. He’s found shelter but said it’s not sustainable.
“It’s insanity,” he said. “Hotels are packed to the gills. Shelters are packed to the gills.”
“Hopefully a lot of these elderly have children,” Geller said. “I pray that they have some means of finding a place to stay, you know — get in and be a home base and just somewhere where they can just recuperate their mindset.”
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from orchestrating its plan to place 2,200 employees of the United States Agency for International Development on leave at midnight.
In an order late Friday, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols — a Trump appointee — issued a temporary restraining that prevents Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency from placing the employees on administrative leave as had been planned. The judge also ordered the reinstatement of some 500 USAID workers who had already been put on administrative leave and ordered that no USAID employees should be evacuated from their host countries before Feb. 14 at 11:59 p.m.
The judge’s order came several hours after a hearing Friday afternoon during which Nichols said he would issue the temporary restraining order.
Two foreign service unions had sued the federal government amid the Trump administration’s attempts to reduce USAID’s workforce from 14,000 to only 300 employees as part of its efforts to slash government spending.
Earlier Nichols had said the order would prevent the “accelerated removal” of USAID employees from their posts overseas.
“This is about how employees are harmed in their capacity as employees — in the employee/employer relationship — and it seems to me that, for reasons I will discuss in this order, that I will enter there, the plaintiffs have established at least that there is irreparable harm as it relates to that relationship,” Nichols said at the hearing.
Lawyers from the Department of Justice acknowledged that 500 employees from USAID have already been placed on leave, with 2,000 more set to go on leave at midnight.
Acting assistant attorney Brett Shumate told the judge the layoffs were necessary because “the president has decided there was corruption and fraud at USAID.”
“He doesn’t have to justify to the plaintiffs and the court how he exercises his foreign affairs,” Shumate argued. “The president has determined, in his view, significant serious action needs to be taken tonight to prevent taxpayer funds from being sent outside the United States, used for purposes that he doesn’t think are appropriate.”
The American Foreign Service Organization and the American Federation of Government Employees filed the lawsuit in D.C. federal court Thursday, alleging that Trump engaged in a series of “unconstitutional and illegal actions” to systematically destroy USAID.
“Children are being pulled out of school during the middle of the school year at developmentally fragile time periods,” plaintiffs’ attorneys told the judge Friday. “People are being cut off from their access to health care without being able to make arrangements for new health care providers when they have serious health conditions. People are being asked to go back to the United States where they may not have housing they don’t have a home to come back to, and they’re being asked to do that with no source of income or in prospects.”
These actions have generated a global humanitarian crisis by abruptly halting the crucial work of USAID employees, grantees, and contractors. They have cost thousands of American jobs. And they have imperiled U.S. national security interests,” the lawsuit said.
The plaintiffs said Trump has unilaterally attempted to reduce the agency without congressional authorization, arguing that Congress is the only entity with the authority to dismantle USAID.
The lawsuit reads like a timeline of the last two weeks, laying out each step that formed the groundwork to break USAID, beginning with Trump’s first day in office. Shortly after Trump froze foreign aid via an executive order on his first day, he began to target USAID by ordering his State Department to begin issuing stop work orders, the lawsuit said.
“USAID grantees and contractors reeled as they were — without any notice or process — constrained from carrying out their work alleviating poverty, disease, and humanitarian crises,” the lawsuit said.
Next came the layoffs, the lawsuit alleges, with thousands of contractors and employees of USAID losing their jobs, leading medical clinics, soup kitchens, and refugee assistance programs across the world to be brought “to an immediate halt.”
“The humanitarian consequences of defendants’ actions have already been catastrophic,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit alleges the Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk — who boasted about “feeding USAID into the woodchipper” — made the final move to gut the agency, locking thousands of employees out of their computers and accessing classified material improperly.
While each step to dismantle the organization differed, the lawsuit alleged that they were unified by one thing: “Not a single one of defendants’ actions to dismantle USAID were taken pursuant to congressional authorization.”
The plaintiffs have asked the court to declare Trump’s actions unlawful and issue an order requiring the Trump administration to “cease actions to shut down USAID’s operations in a manner not authorized by Congress.”
