Judge Rejects Trump’s Bid To Disqualify Georgia Prosecutor

A judge in Atlanta ruled Friday that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can continue prosecuting former President Donald Trump and his co-defendants for trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election if one of her top prosecutors on the case, Nathan Wade, is removed from the team.

But Judge Scott McAfee wrote that either Willis and her entire office or Wade must step aside to prevent an “appearance of conflict” over potential financial improprieties caused by their romantic relationship.

Trump and his allies had failed to sufficiently substantiate claims that Willis’ romantic relationship with Wade had created an “actual” conflict of interest that required her entire team being removed from the case, McAfee concluded.

“The Court finds that the evidence did not establish the District Attorney’s receipt of a material financial benefit,” McAfee ruled, despite characterizing the relationship as a “tremendous lapse in judgment.”

The decision ends, for now, a dispute that derailed the case for more than two months and featured hours of combative testimony from Willis on the witness stand at an evidentiary hearing last month. McAfee has not yet set a trial date.

Despite the bottom-line victory for Willis, McAfee’s ruling was replete with warnings about possible further sanctions for her office. He suggested that Willis’ decision to assail defense attorneys publicly — accusing them of racial animus in a speech at a historically Black church — may warrant a gag order.

“Providing this type of public comment creates dangerous waters for the District Attorney to wade further into,” McAfee wrote.

McAfee also pointed to the prospect of discipline for Willis from other forums, “such as the General Assembly, the Georgia State Ethics Commission, the State Bar of Georgia, the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, or the voters of Fulton County.”

Trump and his fellow defendants could appeal the ruling.

"While respecting the Court’s decision, we believe that the Court did not afford appropriate significance to the prosecutorial misconduct of Willis and Wade,” Steven Sadow said, adding, “We will use all legal options available as we continue to fight to end this case, which should never have been brought in the first place.”

For now, McAfee’s decision clears the way for Willis’ team — minus Wade — to press forward with the case, which charges the former president and numerous allies with a criminal conspiracy to try to overturn Trump’s 11,779-vote defeat in 2020.

Since January, the case has been consumed by the effort, which featured allegations of an affair between Willis and Wade, an outside attorney whom Willis hired under contract — resulting in both prosecutorstaking the witness stand in a dramatic and at times contentious evidentiary hearing.

A lawyer for Mike Roman, a 2020 Trump campaign official and one of the defendants in the case, ignited the issue with a motion to dismiss the case in January, alleging that Wade used income from his work on the case to pay for luxurious vacations with Willis. Other defendants, including Trump, soon joined Roman’s motion.

The defendants alleged that Willis and Wade had improperly benefitted from the case and had a financial incentive to draw out the prosecution. They revealed financial records — some culled from Wade’s ongoing divorce proceedings — showing Willis and Wade took numerous personal trips together that Wade paid for on his credit card. Willis testified last month that she largely reimbursed him in cash.

Willis and Wade have denied wrongdoing. They have admitted that they were romantically involved but swore under oath that the romance did not begin until after Willis hired Wade in November 2021. The defendants disputed that timing, and they produced some evidence that they claimed showed two prosecutors had an intimate relationship well before Wade joined the case.

McAfee’s hearings focused on the timing question and other details of the relationship, such as whether Willis reimbursed Wade in cash for her portion of the trips they took together.

In the end, the judge called the relationship “a tremendous lapse in judgment,” and dinged Willis for "the unprofessional manner of the District Attorney's testimony during the evidentiary hearing." He also found that the relationship created an appearance of impropriety, but that the problem could be solved by the removal of just Wade or of the entire district attorney’s office.