Trump joins motion to disqualify prosecutor in Georgia election case
Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump on Thursday joined an effort to disqualify Fani T. Willis from leading the election interference case against Mr. Trump in Georgia, on the grounds that she created a conflict of interest through her romantic to hire a partner to assist in the prosecution. the case.
Mr. Trump's lawyers also raised a new argument for ousting Ms. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney: that she violated state rules when she claimed in a recent speech that racism was behind the effort to remove her .
The relationship claim surfaced on January 8 in a file by Michael Roman, one of Trump's co-defendants in the Georgia case. Six days later, Ms. Willis, who is Black, gave a speech at an Atlanta church in which she suggested that her critics were “playing the race card” by criticizing her appointment of the special counsel, Nathan J. Wade, who is also Black .
Ms Willis has neither confirmed nor denied a relationship with Mr Wade, although she has been told to provide a written response to Mr Roman's motion next week.
The filing from Mr. Trump's lawyers called Ms. Willis' comments “a blatant, egregious and calculated attempt to stoke racial prejudice in this case by publicly denouncing the defendants for somehow dared to question the decision to hire a black man.”
Ms. Willis' statement, the lawyers wrote, violated a section of the state bar's rules of conduct for prosecutors in Georgia, which directs them “to refrain from making out-of-court comments that have a significant likelihood of to strengthen public condemnation of the suspect.”
The statement could prejudice “prospective jurors in Fulton County,” the attorneys wrote in their filing.
(Mr. Trump has accused Ms. Willis in the past of being a “racist” prosecutor, and has said the same about other black prosecutors handling cases against him.)
The lawyers asked the judge overseeing the Georgia case, Scott McAfee of the Fulton County Superior Court, to dismiss the charges and disqualify Ms. Willis. Any special prosecutors hired for the case should also be disqualified, they said, as should Ms. Willis' entire office.
Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University, said the Trump lawyers' new argument is unlikely to succeed given the “vague” language Ms. Willis used in her speech, which did not name the defendants. “It's a motion in the court of public opinion, not Judge McAfee,” he said.
Thursday's filing is the latest attempt to take advantage of the allegations in Mr. Roman's motion to disqualify Ms. Willis. In that Jan. 8 filing, Mr. Roman argued that Mr. Wade was not qualified for the job and alleged that he used part of his salary from the district attorney's office to take Ms. Willis on vacation.
The motion also states that both Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis “have acquired a personal interest and stake in Mr. Roman's conviction, depriving Mr. Roman of his right to a fundamentally fair trial.”
Last week, a divorce attorney for Mr. Wade's estranged wife produced credit card transactions showing that Mr. Wade had purchased plane tickets for himself and Ms. Willis for trips to Miami and San Francisco over the past two years.
The conflict of interest allegations have cast a shadow on the Georgia case, although they do not change the underlying facts. Last August, a grand jury brought racketeering charges against Mr. Trump and 18 others for their roles in a plot to overturn the state's 2020 election results.
Four of the suspects have already pleaded guilty. Georgia is now one of six swing states that have charged or are investigating fake electors deployed in an effort to keep Mr. Trump in power.
Several potential issues have emerged for Ms. Willis as a result of the allegations. Most immediately, Judge McAfee will have to rule on Mr. Roman's request to disqualify her. The judge has scheduled a hearing for February 15. Mr. Roman's motion also seeks to dismiss the seven charges against him, including a racketeering charge.
While disqualification may seem like an extreme measure, there is already precedent within the Trump case itself. In July 2022, Judge McAfee's predecessor, Robert CI McBurney, disqualified Ms. Willis and her entire office from developing a criminal case against Burt Jones, now the lieutenant governor of Georgia, because Ms. Willis had led a fundraiser for a political opponent of Mr. Jones.
Other threats to Mrs. Willis loom. Republican lawmakers have created a commission to oversee and potentially discipline Georgia's prosecutors. That committee is expected to be up and running later this year and will almost certainly investigate Ms Willis' conduct.
In addition, Fulton County is investigating whether Ms. Willis has run afoul of an ordinance that prohibits county officials from receiving anything of value from people who do business with the county. In a letter to Ms. Willis last week, a county commissioner demanded documents in an effort to determine whether county funds paid to Mr. Wade “were converted for your personal benefit in the form of subsidized travel or other gifts.”
Legal experts disagree on whether a relationship between the two prosecutors would be sufficient reason for Judge McAfee to dismiss them from the case.
But some of them believe the motion is already a victory for Mr. Trump and the other defendants, noting that future jurors in the election case are very likely to hear about the allegations. That could possibly influence their thinking about the prosecution.
“This is certainly a huge political boon for the defense, and it will certainly be used as a bludgeon against the entire prosecution and investigation process,” said Mr. Kreis, a Georgia law professor.
Ms Willis has not addressed the allegation of a romantic relationship with Mr Wade, who is in the midst of a contentious divorce. During her Jan. 14 speech, in which she repeatedly called herself “flawed,” she noted that critics were “attacking only one of the three special prosecutors” she hired for the Georgia case — Mr. Wade.
“God, aren't they the ones playing the race card while only questioning one?” she said.
Days after the speech, Ms. Willis tried to quash a subpoena seeking her testimony in Mr. Wade's divorce case. Her filing alleged that Mr. Wade's estranged wife, Joycelyn Wade, had “conspired” with “interested parties” in the Trump case to “annoy, embarrass and oppress” her.
Mr Wade has been ordered to appear at a divorce hearing next Wednesday. Ms Wade's lawyer, Andrea Dyer Hastings, has said she plans to question him on the witness stand.
Court filings from Ms. Wade this week reveal that her attorney hopes to introduce a flurry of documents into the divorce case, presumably in an effort to further prove a relationship between Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis. The documents include credit card statements and banking information, as well as documents from Airbnb and Vacation Express, a seller of vacation packages in the Caribbean and Mexico.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican and a close ally of Mr. Trump, filed a complaint against Mr. Wade with the state Ethics Commission on Thursday, calling him Ms. Willis' “secret boyfriend” and investigating the case against Mr Trump. Trump a 'self-interested gamble'.