The Georgia Court of Appeals has agreed to take up Donald Trump’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to remain on the case in her RICO prosecution of the ex-president for election interference.

Legal experts were quick to declare this will delay the trial so far that it’s likely it will not take place before the November election. The news comes less than one day after U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, announced she was postponing the Espionage Act/classified documents trial indefinitely.

Professor of law, MSNBC/NBC News legal analyst Joyce Vance posted the Georgia court’s order and her initial response.

The Georgia Court of Appeals has agreed to hear an appeal from defendants over whether the judge erred when he ruled that Fani Willis could remain on the Trump RICO prosecution in Fulton County. This pushes that trial further off, likely beyond the election. pic.twitter.com/F1gXIfwI5E

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) May 8, 2024

“You can scratch off the Georgia trial too now. That’s not happening before the election either,” declared national security attorney Brad Moss.

READ MORE: ‘Rejection of Trump’: 1 in 5 Indiana GOP Voters Just Cast Their Ballot for Nikki Haley

“It is entirely possible that the Manhattan case is the only one that makes it to verdict before the election,” Moss added, pointing to the current falsification of business records, hush money, and election interference case prosecuted by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

“Georgia and the MAL docs cases are almost certainly delayed at this point,” he continued, referring to the Mar-a-Lago Espionage Act/classified documents case. “The DC election fraud case hinges on how and when SCOTUS rules. It is possible but by no means certain that the Fall campaign could see that trial take place. Or it could remain bogged down in legal fights too.”

Georgia State University College of Law constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kreis put it bluntly: “There will be no Georgia trial before 2025. Period. Full stop.”

But he also offered more insight.

“It’ll be a summer of Willis and Wade,” wrote Kreis, referring to Willis’ special prosecutor Nathan Wade, who had a romantic relationship with Willis and resigned after a judge ruled Willis could remain on the case if she corrected certain issues. “Whether the appeals court is more interested in the relationship and the underlying conflict claim or the issue of forensic misconduct over the church speech Willis made in response to the disqualification motion— or both— remains to be seen.”

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But Kreis also attempted to tamp down negative reaction to the Georgia Appeals Court’s decision.

“For everyone complaining about the Fulton County case appeal, let me just say that our Georgia Court of Appeals has incredibly smart, hard-working, and serious judges. They are good and decent folks by and large. So cool it on your hot takes and conspiracy theories there.”

Meanwhile, former federal prosecutor of 30 years, Glenn Kirschner offers some small hope to those wanting to see the trial move forward.

“Judge McAfee said the case will keep moving forward EVEN IF the appeals court grants review,” Kirschner wrote.

Judge McAfee vowed to “continue addressing the many other unrelated pending pretrial motions, regardless of whether the petition is granted within 45 days of filing, and even if any subsequent appeal is expedited by the appellate court.”

Yes, the Georgia Court of Appeals has agreed to review Judge McAfee’s ruling that DA Willis is not disqualified from the RICO prosecution of Trump & his co-conspirators. But recall, Judge McAfee said the case will keep moving forward EVEN IF the appeals court grants review.⬇️ pic.twitter.com/eLaYv2QMUV

— Glenn Kirschner (@glennkirschner2) May 8, 2024

READ MORE: ‘This Isn’t Justice’: Legal Experts Blast Cannon for Postponing Trump Case Indefinitely

Nikki Haley dropped out of the 2024 presidential race exactly two months ago, and yet on Tuesday 128,000 Indiana GOP primary voters cast their ballot for the former Trump UN Ambassador instead of the presumptive Republican nominee.

“Unexpected warning signs for Trump in busy Indiana primary,” reports Politico, which notes, “Nikki Haley’s performance in the already concluded presidential race could be a sign of trouble for Trump in more competitive states.”

Haley, also a former South Carolina governor, was consistently getting double-digit percentages of the GOP primary vote before she dropped out of the race, even in red states. (All vote totals and percentages are from the Associated Press via Google and are current as of time of publication.)

In Alabama, Haley took 13%. In Oklahoma, 15.9%. In Texas, 17.4%. Tennessee, 19.5%.

READ MORE: ‘This Isn’t Justice’: Legal Experts Blast Cannon for Postponing Trump Case Indefinitely

But after Haley dropped out, effectively handing Trump the nomination, Republican primary voters continued to vote for her, and continued to vote for her almost always in double-digit percentages.

In Arizona, Haley won 17.8% of the primary vote. In Georgia, 13.2%. In Kansas, 16.1%.

And last night in Indiana, Haley took 21.7% of the vote.

It’s not just solidly “red” states.

In New Hampshire, Haley won a whopping 43.2% 0f the GOP primary vote.

Tuesday night as the Indiana results were still coming in but pretty much solidified, David Nir, publisher of Daily Kos Elections, asked, “Is Nikki Haley getting *more* popular? Right now, she’s at 21.6% in Indiana with more than 70% reporting. If it holds, that would be her best showing since dropping out after Super Tuesday.”

Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark, replied, “No. It doesn’t have much at all to do with Nikki Haley. It’s that the broadest coalition in American politics is the anti-Trump coalition.”

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Amanda Carpenter, a Republican political commentator who once worked for far-right GOP lawmakers including Senators Ted Cruz and Jim DeMint, agrees with the anti-Trump theory.

“It’s almost as if…more and more Republicans, each day, are rejecting Trump. Perhaps these [Indiana] voters heard what their former congressman and Governor and later Vice President Mike Pence had to say about the president he served?” she wrote. “In all seriousness though, this is not a Nikki Haley movement showing up in double digits in multiple states. It’s anti-Trump GOP voters. Can you hear them yet? This is real.”

The New York Times last month took a look at what is called the “zombie vote,” votes for candidates who have already dropped out.

According to the Times, the “zombie vote in this year’s Republican primary has actually been low by historical standards. In Democratic and Republican primaries going back to 2000, roughly a quarter of voters picked a candidate other than the eventual nominee even after all the other serious contenders had exited the race.”

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“For Mr. Trump,” the Times adds, “what matters is how many of Ms. Haley’s primary voters will rally behind him come November. Polls have shown that her supporters are likely to say they will vote for Mr. Biden. Even so, those same polls often find that many of those voters already supported Mr. Biden in 2020.”

The Nation’s John Nichols last month pointed to just that, after the Pennsylvania primary:

“Haley is not campaigning, but she just won almost 158,000 GOP primary votes in the critical state of Pennsylvania. Democrats think they can swing many of them to Biden.”

Late Tuesday night, pointing to Haley taking more than a third of the vote in some Indiana counties, Nichols concluded, “These numbers continue a pattern of rejection of Donald Trump by precisely the Republicans and Republican-leaning independents he needs in November.”

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon late Tuesday afternoon issued an indefinite postponement of the court date in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Donald Trump on Espionage Act charges, in the indictment commonly referred to as the classified documents case.

Claiming it would be “imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court,” along with other matters, Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, wrote: “the Court finds that the ends of justice served by this continuance…outweigh the best interest of the public and Defendants in a speedy trial.”

Politico’s Kyle Cheney reports, “It may be months before we know the new schedule.” Trial had been slated to begin May 20.

“With 13 days before her trial was supposed to kick off, Judge Cannon finally says what has been obvious to every legal journalist I know: She’s not just canceling the existing trial date; she’s also not picking a replacement,” MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin reports.

READ MORE: Johnson Demands All Trump Prosecutions Cease, Vows to Use Congress ‘In Every Possible Way’

The 37 count indictment was brought after Trump removed well over 1000 items, including hundreds of classified documents, out of the White House, retained then refused to return them, allegedly violating several statutes under the Espionage Act.

“Trump mishandled classified documents that included information about the secretive U.S. nuclear program and potential domestic vulnerabilities in the event of an attack,” according t0 the federal indictment, Reuters reported last year.

The trial now is not expected to conclude before the November presidential election this year.

“This is news but it’s hardly unexpected,” declared professor of law, former U.S. Attorney, and MSNBC contributor Joyce Vance wrote. “Judge Cannon seems desperate to avoid trying this case. This isn’t justice. defendants aren’t the only ones with speedy trial act rights, we the people have them too.”

“After the election,” professor of law and former chief White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter commented, “if Trump wins Jack Smith gets fired, the case gets dismissed, and Judge Cannon is ready for SCOTUS.”

READ MORE: Trump Threatens to Violate Gag Order and Go to Jail: ‘I’ll Do That Sacrifice Any Day’

Attorney and author Luppe B. Luppen noted, “Judge Cannon’s rationale for indefinitely postponing Trump’s classified documents trial is that a large number of pretrial motions remain unresolved—a state of affairs she has literally engineered by failing to resolve them.”

Professor of law and noted election law expert Rick Hasen asked: “Is it too cynical to believe that Judge Cannon timed the announcement of the postponement of a Trump classified documents trial to take away from the salacious sex details from Stormy Daniels’ testimony today?”

National security attorney Brad Moss served up a “silver lining to Cannon not setting a new trial date: she isn’t blocking the DC or Georgia election cases from resuming in the late summer/early fall, pending SCOTUS ruling on immunity.”

Foreign policy, national security, and political affairs analyst David Rothkopf added, “Justice delayed is justice denied. Both the defendant and the public have the right to a trial ‘without unnecessary delay.’ (Sixth Amendment.) When does Jack Smith seek a remedy for the problem Judge Cannon clearly represents? Tick freaking tock.”

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