On Friday embattled Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis finally admitted she was involved in a “personal relationship” with Nathan Wade, her top prosecutor on the county’s 2020 election interference case. Yet she claimed there was no conflict-of-interest that merited removing her or her office from prosecuting former President Donald Trump and 14 other co-defendants.
Her admission was included as part of the DA’s long-delayed written response to allegations of impropriety that threatens to delay any prosecution in the Trump case before the November presidential election..
“(T)he motions attempt to cobble together entirely unremarkable circumstances of Special Prosecutor Wade’s appointment with completely irrelevant allegations about his personal family life into a manufactured conflict of interest on the part of the District Attorney,” the filing said. “The effort must fail.”
To recap what triggered her legal mess, remember that accusations against Willis and Wade first surfaced in a Jan. 8 court filing from Trump co-defendant Michael Roman. His attorney alleges that Willis, through her romantic relationship with Wade, has a financial interest in the case that should remove her and her office from prosecuting it. Roman’s attorney also says it means the felony charges against him should be dropped. In seeking to disqualify the DA, Roman has highlighted records disclosed through Wade’s divorce case, which showed he bought airline tickets for Willis to Napa Valley and the Caribbean using money he apparently earned for his work on the Trump case.
By the way, Willis now claims she was not involved in a romantic relationship until after she hired him to lead the Trump case in November 2021.
In a filing response late Friday, Roman’s attorney infers that Willis’ and Wade’s personal relationship began in 2019, two years before he was appointed special prosecutor. Even though Wade, in his affidavit, said he had never “cohabitated” with Willis, attorney Ashley Merchant’s reply said she has witnesses who will testify that they lived together for awhile at her Fulton County home and later at an apartment in East Point and a safe house for Willis in Hapeville.
“If they had nothing to hide in the first place because they did nothing wrong, then why did they intentionally not tell anyone about it until they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar?” Merchant said. “This highlights the very reason why this court cannot just take their word for it.”
Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead Atlanta attorney, charges Willis with omitting key information from her response, including relevant financial details regarding the expenditure of taxpayer funds and an explanation of why Wade filed for a divorce the day after he was hired on the Trump case. Sadow said the African-American DA also needs to respond to comments she recently made at Atlanta’s Big Bethel AME Church, which he said was designed to create “racial animus” against the white Trump defendants.
This is a lot to digest since Fulton Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee has scheduled an evidentiary hearing on February 15.
