Judge rules Fani Willis can stay on Donald Trump election interference case in Georgia

A romance between the district attorney who indicted Donald Trump on election-interference-related charges and her deputy created an ‘appearance of impropriety,’ the order says.

Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis. Picture: AFP

A Georgia judge ruled that Fani Willis, the prosecutor who indicted Donald Trump on election-interference-related charges, can continue her case so long as the deputy with whom she had a romantic relationship steps aside, prompting his swift resignation.

The now-ended relationship between Willis and Nathan Wade, her chief legal adviser, created an “appearance of impropriety,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee wrote in a filing. Willis’s office has paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars for legal services since 2021.

Willis wrote a letter to Wade accepting his resignation, according to a copy of the document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

“I compliment you for the professionalism and dignity you have shown over the last 865 days, as you have endured threats against you and your family,” Willis wrote to Wade.

The judge’s order earlier in the day marked a partial win for defence lawyers who raised conflict-of-interest concerns, but it stopped short of giving them the outright victory they sought: getting Willis, and the case itself, dismissed.

A spokesman for Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, didn’t respond to a request for comment after Wade’s resignation came to light.

The relationship between Willis and Wade became public in January when Ashleigh Merchant, a lawyer for Trump co-defendant Michael Roman, filed a motion seeking the disqualification of Willis, a Democrat, on grounds she and Wade benefited financially from his contract to work on the case against the Republican former president. The filing alleged the pair took cruises and other vacations together, something Willis and Wade later confirmed but said didn’t amount to a conflict because they generally divided the costs roughly evenly.

Roman alleged their relationship could have influenced prosecutorial decisions.

Special prosecutor Nathan Wade attending a recent hearing in Atlanta. Picture: AFP

Lawyers including those for Trump and former Georgia Republican Party Chair David Shafer later joined the motion to dismiss the case and disqualify Willis.

“[T]he established record now highlights a significant appearance of impropriety that infects the current structure of the prosecution team,” McAfee wrote.

Defence lawyers wanted McAfee to use an appearance of impropriety alone as grounds to dismiss Willis. But McAfee applied a different standard, that there was an actual conflict of interest, which was harder for defence lawyers to meet.

McAfee concluded the defence didn’t present sufficient evidence to prove that Willis has benefited financially from the case and her relationship with Wade. He also ruled that Wade’s removal would clear up the appearance of impropriety.

But, the judge added: “This finding is by no means an indication that the Court condones this tremendous lapse in judgment.”

In August 2023, Trump and 18 co-defendants were indicted on racketeering charges alleging they engaged in a criminal conspiracy to subvert the 2020 presidential election. All defendants pleaded not guilty; four since have taken plea deals.

Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead counsel in the Georgia case, said Friday his legal team would use all legal options available to get the case dismissed. Trump’s campaign sent a fundraising email to supporters shortly after the ruling became public, asking for their support to “end the witch hunt.” It wasn’t immediately clear if Roman would seek to appeal McAfee’s decision. “This opinion is a vindication that everything put forth by the defence was true, accurate and relevant,” Merchant, Roman’s lawyer, told the Journal before Wade’s resignation. “The judge clearly agreed with the defence that the actions of Willis are a result of her poor judgment and that there is a risk to the future of this case if she doesn’t quickly work to cure her conflict.” While Friday’s ruling represented a reprieve from the immediate threat of disqualification for Willis, “her troubles are far from over,” said Clark Cunningham, a Georgia State College of Law professor who has been following the case.

Cunningham said that because Roman and others could appeal McAfee’s motion, “the risk of her removal and resulting disqualification of her entire office still looms.”

Any appeal would further delay setting a trial date in the case. Some Willis allies had suggested for weeks Wade should step away from the case.

“It’s time to turn the page on this distraction and get back to what this case is really about – the mountain of evidence against Donald Trump and his co-conspirators concerning one of the most serious alleged criminal conspiracies in American history,” said Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who worked in the Obama administration.

McAfee focused part of his ruling on a hearing about the disqualification motion during which – in surprise moves – Wade and Willis took the stand for hours of combative testimony.

Willis and Wade had sought to defend their relationship against sharp questioning from defence lawyers. McAfee concluded that the hearing raised “reasonable questions about whether the District Attorney and her hand-selected lead [Wade] testified untruthfully about the timing of their relationship.”

Of their testimony, McAfee wrote, “an odour of mendacity remains.”

McAfee also criticised Willis for delivering a speech at a Black church, where she attacked criticism of Wade’s qualifications as being racially motivated. She gave the speech before she responded in court to the Roman filing. McAfee called her public statements “legally improper.”

“The time may well have arrived for an order preventing the State from mentioning the case in any public forum,” he wrote.

– Alex Leary contributed to this article.

– Dow Jones Newswires