WASHINGTON POST
ATLANTA — Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) admitted she had a personal relationship with an outside prosecutor she appointed to manage the election interference case against former president Donald Trump and his allies but denied claims that the relationship had tainted the proceedings.
In a 176-page court filing on Friday, Willis called the claims against her “meritless” and “salacious.” She asked a judge to reject motions from Trump and other co-defendants that seek to disqualify her and her office from the case — and to do so without an evidentiary hearing. Willis denied claims of misconduct, said there was no evidence that the relationship between her and special prosecutor Nathan Wade had prejudiced the case.
The filing included a sworn affidavit from Wade, who said there was “no personal relationship” between him and Willis “prior to or at the time” he was appointed. Wade’s affidavit said that in 2022 he and Willis “developed a personal relationship in addition to our professional association and friendship.”
Wade also denied that his role had financially benefited Willis. Mike Roman, the Trump co-defendant who first leveled allegations of misconduct, accused Wade of paying for “lavish” vacations with Willis. Wade said in his affidavit that the two had split travel expenses “equally.”
“No funds paid to me in compensation for my role as Special Prosecutor have been shared with or provided to District Attorney Willis,” Wade said, in the affidavit. “The District Attorney received no funds or personal financial gain from my position as Special Prosecutor.”
Willis’s response has been eagerly anticipated by the defendants, their lawyers and the public at large. Even defenders of the case have conceded that Willis damaged her own reputation and public perception of the case itself by engaging in a relationship with Wade. The fate of the Georgia investigation now falls to Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who has scheduled an evidentiary hearing on the allegations for Feb. 15. But even if he rules for Willis and cancels that hearing, the headlines will continue.
A Georgia Senate committee is also investigating the allegations, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has referred the matter to the Georgia ethics commission for potential sanctions and has also requested that Gov. Brian Kemp (R) or Attorney General Chris Carr (R) launch a criminal investigation. In other words, the controversy is likely to swirl in public for weeks to come, with embarrassing questions about Willis’s personal life and finances potentially damaging the public’s — and a future jury’s — faith in her judgment and in the merits of the case.
The response contains numerous citations of case law that Willis claims render all three motions to disqualify her meritless. A personal relationship among prosecutors does not create a conflict of interest, she wrote.
Willis’s response came more than three weeks after Roman, a former high-ranking campaign aide during the 2020 election, alleged in a court filing that Willis was engaged in a “personal, romantic relationship” with Wade, whose firm has been paid more than $653,000 by the district attorney’s office since he was tapped as an outside prosecutor on the case in November 2021.
