by Fani T. Willis, the district attorney handling the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald J. Trump, acknowledged on Friday a “personal relationship” with a prosecutor she hired to handle the case, but argued that it was not a motive. to disqualify her. or his office from there.
The admission came nearly a month after allegations of a “clandestine and inappropriate personal relationship” between the two emerged in a motion filed by one of Trump’s co-defendants. The motion seeks to disqualify both prosecutors and Willis’ entire office from handling the case, an effort that, if successful, would likely sow chaos for an unprecedented racketeering prosecution of a former president.
“While the allegations raised in the various motions are salacious and attracted the media attention they were designed to garner, none provide this Court with any basis to order the relief they seek,” Ms. Willis’ filing said, and He added that his relationship with the prosecutor, Nathan J. Wade, “has never involved a direct or indirect financial benefit” for Ms. Willis.
The filing included a sworn statement from Mr. Wade stating that the relationship began only after Mr. Wade was hired.
The original motion containing the allegations, filed by Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign official, alleged that Willis had hired her “boyfriend” as a special prosecutor, giving him lucrative contracts even though he was unqualified, and then profited by continuing vacations that Mr. Wade paid for.
But Willis said in his filing that “financial responsibility for personal travel undertaken is divided approximately equally.” Wade echoed that language in his affidavit, adding that Ms. Willis “did not receive any funds or personal financial gain from my position as Special Prosecutor.”
Mr. Roman’s motion also alleged that the relationship began before Wade began working for the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office in November 2021. But Wade, in his affidavit, claimed that while he had been friends with Willis since 2019, it was not until 2022 that he “developed a personal relationship” with her.
The allegations, and Willis’s silence about them until now, have thrown the high-stakes prosecution off balance, giving Trump a new line of attack and raising the possibility of delays or more serious impacts on the case. Ms. Willis has attempted to have the trial begin in August, but no date has been set.
The allegations do not change the underlying facts of the case, which accuse Trump and his allies of participating in a plot to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Four of the original 19 defendants have pleaded guilty, including some of Trump’s most enthusiastic defenders. One of them, Jenna Ellis, said through tears during a hearing late last year that she remembered what she did “with deep remorse.”
The motion filed by Roman last month provided no evidence of a romantic relationship. But several weeks after the lawsuit was filed, Wade’s ex-wife submitted credit card statements showing he purchased plane tickets for himself and Willis after he began working for her office. Records show flights to San Francisco from Atlanta purchased on April 25, 2023 and to Miami from Atlanta purchased on October 4, 2022.
But Willis also purchased plane tickets for herself and Wade, according to Friday’s filing, which included copies of her email traffic with Delta showing travel arrangements to and from Miami. Melissa D. Redmon, a law professor at the University of Georgia and former Fulton County prosecutor, said some of the claims contained in the documents could make it difficult for Mr. Roman’s motion to succeed.
“If they are splitting the costs,” Professor Redmon said, referring to Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade’s personal travel expenses, “it would be difficult to say that she personally benefited.”
He added: “That is the crux of the defendants’ strongest argument: that she should be disqualified because of her personal benefit from the relationship.”
In a 2022 interview with The New York Times, Willis said that Wade had not been his first choice for the job. But she described him as a lifelong mentor and friend whom she hired because she could trust him.
Mr. Roman’s motion states that the relationship amounts to a conflict of interest that should be grounds for disqualification and asks that the case against Mr. Roman be dismissed. Trump joined the motion last week; He also argued in a separate filing that Ms. Willis violated state bar rules when she claimed in a speech last month that racism was behind her effort to disqualify her and Mr. Wade. Both prosecutors are black, while most of the defendants are white.
Ms. Willis scoffed at the conflict of interest claim, writing that the idea that she had a financial interest in the case was based on “fantastic theories and outright speculation.” Georgia law requires much more.”
“The existence of a relationship between members of a prosecution team, in and of itself, is simply not a status that entitles a criminal defendant to any remedy,” he added.
These issues will be considered by the judge presiding over the case, Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court. He has set a hearing for February 15. Roman’s attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, has sent subpoenas demanding that Wade, Willis and several other witnesses testify at the hearing, although it is unclear whether the judge will allow her to put them on the stand.
Responding to Ms. Willis’s submission on Friday, Ms. Merchant argued that the hearing was still necessary. She said in her own filing that witnesses had “personal knowledge that Wade and Willis’ personal relationship began prior to her appointment as special prosecutor,” and she said she wanted to question him in court about the issue.
Within the framework of the investigation for electoral interference, there is already a precedent of disqualification of the prosecutor’s office. In July 2022, a judge disqualified Willis and his office from pursuing a criminal case against Burt Jones, now lieutenant governor of Georgia, because Willis had spearheaded a fundraiser for one of his political opponents.
But in his filing Friday, Willis wrote that the scheduled hearing was unnecessary and would be the equivalent of “a ticket to the circus.” The “assumptions and insinuations” about his personal life, he wrote, were “disgusting.”
Wade has earned more than $650,000 from his work at the district attorney’s office, prompting Roman, in his presentation, to repeatedly refer to “lucrative” contracts. But Willis defended Wade’s salary. His $250-per-hour rate, he said, was not “out of the norm for law enforcement agencies in Georgia.”
And while Wade earned more than other special prosecutors in the case, he noted, the others had “much more circumscribed duties.”
“Special Prosecutor Wade made much more money than the other special prosecutors only because Wade did much more work,” Ms. Willis wrote.
But at least the optics haven’t been good for Ms. Willis’ team. During her campaign for district attorney in 2020, Ms. Willis ran against an incumbent facing sexual harassment allegations. During a campaign appearance, Ms. Willis said: “I certainly won’t pick people who work under me to date, let me say that.” (Her opponent, Paul Howard, was found not guilty of harassment allegations in December).
In a fresh broadside against Willis, the House Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, a staunch Trump ally, subpoenaed his office on Friday over its use of federal funds.
Trump himself has taken advantage of the accusations. In a social media post on Friday, he saying that Ms. Willis “was able to get her ‘lover’” a significant amount of money by hiring him for the case, based on the fact that the target was Mr. Trump. “That means this scam is totally debunked and over!” she added.
In Georgia, where Republicans firmly control state government, several investigations are underway that will likely explore whether ethical and criminal violations were committed. The biggest risk to Willis and the case itself could come from a new commission created by Republican state lawmakers to oversee district attorneys. The commission is expected to review its conduct when it becomes operational later this year.
But disappointment has also been palpable among some Trump critics, who expect him to face consequences for his attempts to remain in power after losing the 2020 election. Late last year, the digital publication The root He named Ms. Willis No. 1 on his list of the 100 most influential black Americans and feted her at a ceremony at the Apollo Theater in Harlem.
Then, after the allegations surfaced last month, The Root published an article criticizing Ms. Willis for her lack of judgment, even as she said black people in high-profile positions were held to stricter standards than their white counterparts. . “We all love Willis here at The Root, so she got first place at last month’s The Root 100 ceremony,” Article fixed. “But she should have known better than to put herself in this position.”
In a statement Friday, Steven H. Sadow, Trump’s lead lawyer in Georgia, said Willis’s response did not provide “full transparency and necessary financial details” related to the relationship. Sadow also claimed that the speech Willis gave in Atlanta on January 14, in which he suggested that his critics were “playing the race card,” was “a violation of his ethical responsibilities as a prosecutor.”
Ms. Willis’ presentation included examples of some of the racist invective directed at her since she began investigating Mr. Trump, including unprintable insults and epithets, sentiments such as “slavery forever,” and a depiction of Ms. Willis’s face. next to a rope.
“One may wonder if the intent is to disqualify the prosecutor who has taken on all the abuses to seek justice in this case at great personal cost,” he wrote, “only to be replaced by someone less committed to doing so.”
