Even if a new prosecutor wants to continue on the path charted by Willis, it seems unlikely that Trump could be prosecuted now that he is the sitting president. But there are 14 other defendants who still face charges in the case.

A grand jury in Atlanta indicted Trump and 18 others in August 2023, using the state’s anti-racketeering law to accuse them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally try to overturn Trump’s narrow 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden in Georgia. The alleged scheme included Trump’s call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger urging him to investigate allegations of “outcome determinative” voter fraud. Four people have pleaded guilty.

The Georgia case was one of four criminal cases brought in 2023 against Trump. Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith abandoned two federal prosecutions after Trump won the November election. In his hush money case in New York, Trump was convicted on 34 counts but received a sentence of no punishment.

Willis had asked the Georgia high court to consider whether the lower appeals court was wrong to disqualify her “based solely upon an appearance of impropriety and absent a finding of an actual conflict of interest or forensic misconduct.”

She also asked the state Supreme Court to weigh whether the Court of Appeals erred “in substituting the trial court’s discretion with its own” in this 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,” Willis’ filing said. “And no Georgia court has ever reversed a trial court’s order declining to disqualify a prosecutor based solely on an appearance of impropriety.”

Lawyers for Trump had argued in a court filing that the lower appeals court got it right and that Willis’ “disqualification is mandated because it is the only remedy that could purge the taint of impropriety.”