A Georgia appellate court Thursday disqualified Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and removed her from prosecuting Donald Trump and co-defendants in a case she brought over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The decision is likely to cripple the case and bring a halt to the efforts to try Trump and his allies for their efforts to overturn his loss. Federal prosecutors have already dropped Trump’s federal criminal case related to the 2020 election in the wake of his winning the presidency.

“After carefully considering the trial court’s findings in its order, we conclude that it erred by failing to disqualify DA Willis and her office,” the court said, referring to an earlier ruling that allowed Willis to remain on the case. Willis had been under scrutiny over her relationship with a special prosecutor on the case, Nathan Wade. Trump and other co-defendants had requested to have Willis removed from the case.

Trump’s team and the DA’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The court did not go so far as to completely dismiss the case, and Georgia law allows for the case to be assigned to a different county prosecutor in the state. But legal experts have said that is likely to be a difficult task given the complicated, political and novel nature of the case brought by Willis.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAffee had found that an “appearance of impropriety” was created by Willis’ romantic relationship with Wade and determined one of the two needed to leave the case. Within hours of that decision, Wade resigned.

But the appellate court said McAffee’s decision did not prevent the “appearance of impropriety.”

“The remedy crafted by the trial court to prevent an ongoing appearance of impropriety did nothing to address the appearance of impropriety that existed at times when DA Willis was exercising her broad pretrial discretion about who to prosecute and what charges to bring,” the court said. “While we recognize that an appearance of impropriety generally is not enough to support disqualification, this is the rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings.”