9 months ago
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis acknowledged entering a personal relationship with a prosecutor who is helping lead her case against Donald Trump but said it had no bearing on her handling of the probe. Rather, she said, efforts by Trump and his co-defendants to disqualify her from the case due to the relationship were a "public relations strategy" meant to hamstring the probe.
In a 176-page filing on Friday, Willis disputed claims that her relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade posed a conflict of interest, and she denied that she was improperly enriched by the Trump case. Last month, one of Trump’s co-defendants alleged in court documents that Wade has used income he earned from the case to pay for lavish trips with Willis.
Willis’ filing — her first formal response to the allegations of misconduct — said that she and Wade were not romantically involved when she hired him as a contract attorney in November 2021 to help run her probe of efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.
In 2022, the two prosecutors “developed a personal relationship in addition to our professional association and friendship,” the filing said.
Willis, however, argued that the relationship did not violate any ethics rules and that there was no reason it should derail the case. She also defended Wade’s credentials and billing practices.
Willis called the effort to disqualify her office “malicious” and urged Judge Scott McAfee to cancel a hearing, scheduled for Feb. 15, on the allegations of misconduct.
“This is not an example of zealous advocacy, nor is it a good faith effort to develop a record on a disputed legal issue — it is a ticket to the circus,” the filing says.
The filing comes nearly a month after Mike Roman, one of the 19 people Willis charged under the state’s organized crime statute, alleged that Willis personally benefited from her relationship with Wade. Roman, a former Trump campaign official, also argued that Willis did not have the legal power to make Wade a special prosecutor and that therefore his role in Roman’s indictment should invalidate the charges altogether.
“Spurious allegations of publicity-seeking aside, it must be made clear that District Attorney Willis did not go looking for this case,” reads Willis’ filing. “These Defendants centered their racketeering conspiracy to disrupt and overturn the 2020 Georgia election in Fulton County, committing crimes that provided a venue in this jurisdiction. The motions are based on guesswork and public relations strategy, not legal argument.”
Willis seeded the filing with swipes at other attorneys in the case, writing that two of the defense lawyers involved were also known to be romantically involved and that another pair of attorneys were married. Neither of those relationships, she added, were grounds for controversy.
“Until Roman’s motion was filed, the private lives of the attorney participants in this trial was not a topic of discussion,” she argued.
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