Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump and eight of his co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case asked an appeals court on Friday to take up their challenge of a judge’s ruling that allowed the prosecutor Fani T. Willis to stay on the case.
With their application to appeal, the defendants are once again pressing their argument that Ms. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, created an untenable conflict of interest by having a romantic relationship with the special prosecutor she hired to manage the Trump case.
The presiding judge in the criminal case, Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court, had already given the defendants permission to pursue their appeal after he ruled against the efforts to disqualify Ms. Willis.
But under Georgia law, the co-defendants must also secure the approval of the Georgia Court of Appeals before the matter can be heard by a panel of three appellate judges.
The filing on Friday seeks to convince the higher court it should consider their arguments that the criminal case should be dismissed, or that Ms. Willis and her office should be disqualified.
The appeals court has 45 days to decide whether to grant or deny the appeal application.
The effort to disqualify Ms. Willis led to multiple days of hearings that delved into salacious details of her personal life. Defense lawyers argued that she had engaged in “self-dealing” by taking vacations with the man she had hired to manage the case, Nathan J. Wade, and allowing him to pay for at least some of the trips.
