Fani Willis, the district attorney for Fulton County, addresses claims that she mishandled the former president Donald Trump’s Georgia prosecution. Although she acknowledges having an affair with one of the case’s prosecutors, she begs a state judge to reject the allegations without holding a hearing.
Willis acknowledges having a personal relationship with Nathan Wade, a divorcing married man. She contends, though, that their relationship does not exclude her from the Georgia election meddling lawsuit.
Don’t miss this! Carry faith with you everywhere with the Exclusive National Prayer Coin!
“While the allegations raised in the various motions are salacious and garnered the media attention they were designed to obtain, none provide this Court with any basis upon which to order the relief they seek,” Willis stated in the filing.
In a shocking complaint filed last month, Mike Roman—one of the eighteen Trump allies charged by a Fulton County grand jury on charges of plotting to rig the county’s election results—said that Willis and Wade had a “improper, clandestine” relationship. This raised concerns about whether the two had misappropriated thousands of dollars in public funds.
With assurance, Willis rejected Roman’s motion—which was also supported by Trump and a different defendant—as having “no merit” and requested that it be turned down without a hearing. This is Willis’ first official reaction to the accusations stated in Roman’s mid-January complaint.
Wade claimed in his affidavit that while working on the racketeering case in 2022, he became close friends with Willis.
Ashleigh Merchant, Roman’s attorney, filed a complaint against the claims before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee. McAfee has scheduled a hearing for February 15th to examine the complaint and has directed Willis to respond to the allegations by Friday. In addition, Merchant has sued Willis with the intention of subpoenaing Wade, her, and other district attorney officials.
Willis requests that McAfee postpone the hearing scheduled for February 15th, citing “meritless” conflicts of interest. The district attorney made a number of bullet points designed to refute Roman’s assertions.
“To be absolutely clear, the personal relationship between Special Prosecutor Wade and District Attorney Willis has never involved direct or indirect financial benefit to District Attorney Willis,” the filing reads. “Defendants have produced no evidence to suggest that there is any circumstance that would constitute a financial incentive on the District Attorney’s part to pursue a conviction in this case through the appointment of Special Prosecutor Wade.”
ALERT! Major Water Restrictions In Effect!
On January 8, Roman, a former Trump campaign official, filed a motion revealing that Wade had received more than $600,000 from Willis’s office since 2021. This payment was made in exchange for his services in the case, which involved supervising a covert grand jury probe into claims that Trump and his associates attempted to rig Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results.
Roman, an accomplished researcher, is accused of racketeering in Fulton County on seven serious counts. After putting in a lot of work to file his complaint, he was charged with racketeering conspiracy, forgery, impersonating a public official, filing false documents, and making false statements.
Wade’s sealed divorce case’s leaked court documents have given Roman’s claims more weight. Credit card transactions found in the records show that Wade and Willis took a Royal Caribbean cruise in October 2022, and that he paid for his travel several months after being hired by her office in January.
According to Willis, Roman’s motion is an attempt to fabricate a conflict of interest between the appointment of Special Prosecutor Wade and unrelated claims regarding his personal life. But this attempt will not bear fruit.
In order to make the travel payments more clear, Wade’s affidavit states that he and Willis paid for their own travel expenses. It also verifies that Wade kept all of the money he earned from pursuing the criminal case to himself.
“Financial responsibility for personal travel taken is divided roughly evenly between the two, with neither being primarily responsible for expenses of the other, and all expenses paid for with individual personal funds,” according to page 15 of Willis’s response.
“In a compelling example, Willis referenced the landmark case of Jones v. Jones to illustrate her argument. The court explicitly stated that there is no existing authority nor any citations suggesting that married lawyers engaged in opposing litigation must be disqualified. Furthermore, Willis emphasized that this standard should also extend to prosecutors collaborating on the same case.”
Willis claims that Roman’s motion makes no mention of the relevant legal precedents or other supporting authority that would support disqualification or dismissal in this particular circumstance. Willis also draws attention to the fact that two of the lawyers in the Trump case who are defending various defendants have a personal relationship.
Now, McAfee must decide whether to agree to postpone the hearing that was supposed to consider Roman’s accusations of improper behavior and concerns regarding the use of public funds. McAfee might still take the motion under consideration due to the “appearance of impropriety” standard, which would probably elicit a further response from Roman’s legal team.
If Roman’s motion to disqualify was denied, it would not stop him from appealing, which would cause the trial to drag out even longer. Legal experts speculate that since Trump is still running for president in 2024, the trial might not start until after the election.
Following Willis’s response, Trump’s lawyer Steve Sadow issued a statement in which he declared that, in his opinion, “nothing has changed” and that Willis should continue to be excluded from the case and the charges dismissed.
Roman is asking for a cross-examination of Wade’s affidavit claims through an evidentiary hearing. He feels that the judge should take his motion for disqualification into consideration.
Roman’s attorney has a question for the special prosecutor that relates to Wade’s claim that he and Willis never lived together.
“In Paragraph 31 of your affidavit, you swore that you have never cohabitated with Ms. Willis but the attached documents show you shared a king size bed with her in Aruba from November 1, 2022 until November 4,” Roman’s filing stated.
“Additionally, witnesses will testify that you cohabitated with Ms. Willis at her home in South Fulton until her father moved in with her and you then began to cohabitate at the apartment of a friend of hers in East Point,” the filing continued.
The Washington Examiner has learned from sources close to Roman—a well-known political figure—that the accusations he made against Willis were painstakingly investigated over a number of months. Roman is praised in these sources as being among the best researchers in conservative political networks.
“Roman knows how to defeat his opponents, and he will do so,” J. Christian Adams told USA First Reporting that he has been monitoring the events in Fulton County as a conservative elections lawyer.
It’s still unclear how the judge will rule on Willis’s request to postpone the hearing until February 15. But if the judge holds the hearing, it will be broadcast live on the internet and is anticipated to be one of the most closely followed court cases in this case since Trump and the other 18 defendants were charged in August of last year.
She met Wade on rackateering case? Hell, shev and Wade had their o we n racketeering going on. She was paying her boyfriend double anybody else and riding high on cruises, trips and who knows what else.