What Fani Willis controversy means for major lawsuit against Trump

Should Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis step aside from the sweeping Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump and others?

Even some of District Attorney Willis’ supporters are weighing that question in the wake of accusations that she had a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, an attorney she hired to help run the Trump prosecution.

A co-defendant in the case made the allegation in a court filing earlier this month. Credit card statements included in a separate filing in Mr. Wade’s ongoing divorce case show that he bought airline tickets for himself and Ms. Willis on at least two occasions.

Ms. Willis has not yet directly addressed the situation. The case, while in state rather than federal court, involves some of the most consequential criminal indictments facing Mr. Trump – focusing around his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.

One legal expert who has followed the case closely says that he has not yet seen any evidence that should lead to Ms. Willis’ disqualification. It appears more a political issue about how public money is spent, and less a conflict of interest that would prejudice any of the 2020 election defendants, says Anthony Michael Kreis, an assistant professor in constitutional law and political scientist at Georgia State University College of Law.

“The whole thing is a bad look and the office’s silence is doing Willis no favors, but without more evidence I do not see any immediate need for Fani Willis to step aside,” says Professor Kreis in an email.

Accusation focuses on prosecutors’ ties

On Jan. 8 an attorney for Michael Roman, a former Trump election aide and co-defendant in the Georgia election case, filed a motion asking that the charges against her client be dismissed. The filing alleged that District Attorney Willis had engaged in a clandestine personal relationship with Mr. Wade, an outside attorney and former judge hired to serve as a special prosecutor for the challenging, multidefendant election case.

The filing alleged that Ms. Willis had financially benefited from the arrangement, as the supposed couple used legal fees from the case to pay for travel to Florida, Napa Valley, and other vacation spots.

The filing contained no hard evidence of this arrangement. However, Mr. Wade and his wife, Joycelyn Wade, are enmeshed in divorce proceedings, and unsealed documents filed pursuant to that case show receipts for the purchase of flights to San Francisco and Miami for Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis.

Ms. Willis responded obliquely to the charges in a speech at a church service the Sunday prior to the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. She said nothing about the relationship allegations but defended her leadership of her office and pushed back against critics. She hired three special prosecutors to help with the Trump case, she said: a white man, a white woman, and a Black man. 

No one had questioned the qualifications of the white prosecutors, she said. Without mentioning Mr. Wade by name, she called him a “superstar, a great friend, and a great lawyer.”

What could come next?

Mr. Trump and his allies have used the alleged romance to accuse Ms. Willis and her office of prosecutorial misconduct. A day after the allegations became public, for instance, the former president said the case against him in Georgia should now be dropped because it was “totally compromised.”

Georgia’s Republican-controlled state Senate voted 30-19 Friday to create a special committee to determine whether Ms. Willis has misspent state tax money.

A day earlier, a lawyer for Mr. Trump filed a motion supporting Mr. Roman’s accusations, and further accusing the Fulton County district attorney of “racial animus” in her church address prior to the MLK holiday.

Mr. Roman’s filing asks Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing the election prosecution, to remove Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade from the government’s case against Mr. Trump. Judge McAfee does have the power to do so, say legal experts. But even if he were to remove them, such a move would involve considerable delay as a council of Georgia prosecutors would need to find another government attorney willing and able to lead the prosecutorial team.

Some legal experts doubt that what’s surfaced so far would lead to a disqualification for the prosecutors. A romance between prosecutors – if there were one – would reflect poor judgment, they say. But there are no state laws against it.

If Ms. Willis had hired Mr. Wade with the motive of funneling his pay back to her benefit, that would be much more problematic. But the facts do not support anything like that so far.

“Crucially, neither Willis nor Wade have any pecuniary gain that will vest if the Fulton County DA’s office secure convictions,” says Professor Kreis.

But as a political matter, the alleged affair could have a large impact, playing into Mr. Trump’s larger goal of depicting all the prosecutions against him as somehow corrupt and motivated by animus against him.

In an analysis on the legal website Just Security, attorneys Norman Eisen, Joyce Vance, and Richard Painter conclude that there is no basis for disqualifying either Ms. Willis or Mr. Wade under Georgia law, even if all factual allegations against them are true. 

The allegations may go to obligations that the pair have to the Fulton County district attorney’s office, but they do not affect the propriety of the prosecution any more than other instances in which prosecutors allegedly took office supplies for personal use or drove county vehicles for errands, according to the analysis.

Still, a personal relationship between the prosecutors would reflect “poor judgment” on their part, especially in a case of this magnitude, write the attorneys. They urge that Mr. Wade voluntarily step down, as his presence in the case has become a “distraction.”

Judge McAfee has ordered Ms. Willis to respond to Mr. Roman’s allegations in writing by Feb. 2. He has scheduled a Feb. 15 evidentiary hearing on the accusations.