Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was barred from prosecuting Donald Trump over her efforts to overturn the 2020 election results because of her relationship with her top deputy in the case, the Georgia state appeals court ruled on Thursday.

The 2-1 decision to remove Willis — and overturn the presiding judge’s ruling that allowed her to remain on the case as long as deputy Nathan Wade resigned — likely marks the death knell for the final remaining criminal case against Trump.

The appeals court did not dismiss the charges against the president-elect, but with Willis also disqualifying other prosecutors from her position and Trump returning to the White House in January, it is unlikely that the case will proceed in its current form.

“After careful consideration of the trial court’s findings in its order, we conclude that it erred by failing to disqualify Attorney General Willis and her office,” Judge Trenton Brown wrote in the 31-page opinion.

“The remedy devised by the trial court to prevent a persistent appearance of impropriety did nothing to eliminate the appearance of impropriety that existed at a time when Attorney General Willis exercised her broad pretrial discretion over who should be prosecuted and what charges should be filed .

“While we recognize that the appearance of impropriety is generally not sufficient to justify disqualification, this is the rare case where disqualification is ordered and no other remedy is sufficient to restore public confidence in the integrity of this process. “

Trump and more than a dozen of his associates were charged with racketeering last year over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. As part of their attempt to dismiss the case, Trump and his co-defendants claimed Willis’ relationship meant she should be removed from the case.

The initial attempt to have Willis disqualified failed after Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee ruled that Trump and his co-defendants had not established an actual conflict of interest following days of contentious evidentiary hearings.

Still, McAfee concluded that her relationship with Wade presented the appearance of a conflict that needed to be addressed. In order for Willis to continue prosecuting the case, he ordered Wade to resign from the prosecution. Wade resigned later that evening.

Willis vehemently denied wrongdoing when she testified at evidentiary hearings last February. She denied allegations that her relationship with Wade influenced the prosecution and the scope of the case, insisting there was no conflict of interest.

The district attorney testified that her relationship with Wade began months after she hired him as a special prosecutor and ended in the summer of 2023, around the time a grand jury in Atlanta returned racketeering indictments against Trump.

Willis also sought to refute allegations that, through Wade’s hiring, she engaged in a type of kickback scheme in which she benefited from his earnings, as alleged by defense attorneys for one of Trump’s co-defendants, Michael Roman. She testified that she reimbursed him for all costs he incurred.

The allegations first surfaced last January in a filing from Roman’s attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, who complained about a possible conflict of interest arising from what she described as “self-dealing” between Willis and Wade as a result of their then-unconfirmed romantic relationship.

Roman’s filing essentially accused Willis of engaging in a quasi-kickback scheme in which Wade paid for joint vacations in Florida and California with more than $650,000 in earnings from work on the Trump case. The filing also claimed the relationship began before he was hired.