The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Trump case love drama resignation
Aspecial prosecutor who had a romantic relationship with Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis yesterday formally withdrew from the Georgia election interference case against former president Donald Trump after a judge ruled one of them had to leave the case for it to move forward.
Lawyer Nathan Wade’s role in the prosecution had come under fire since a lawyer representing one of Mr Trump’s co-defendants alleged in early January that Mr Wade and Ms Willis were involved in an “inappropriate relationship” that resulted in Ms Willis profiting improperly from the prosecution.
Mr Wade offered his resignation, “in the interest of democracy”.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee did not find that Ms Willis’s relationship with Mr Wade amounted to a conflict of interest that should disqualify her from the case. However, he said, the allegations created an “appearance of impropriety” that infected the prosecution team.
The sprawling indictment charges Mr Trump and more than a dozen other defendants with violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act, known as Rico.
The case uses a statute normally associated with mobsters to accuse the former president, lawyers and other aides of a “criminal enterprise” to keep him in power after he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden.
Mr Trump, the Republicans’ presumptive presidential nominee for 2024, has denied doing anything wrong.
Meanwhile, a judge delayed Trump’s hush-money criminal trial until at least mid-April after his lawyers said they needed more time to sift through evidence they only recently obtained.
Judge Juan Manuel Merchan has agreed to a 30-day postponement.
The trial is among four criminal indictments against Trump. His lawyers wanted a 90-day delay.
Prosecutors said most of the newly turned over material is “largely irrelevant to the subject matter of this case”.
The hush money case centres on allegations that Mr Trump falsified his company’s records to hide payments to his former lawyer Michael Cohen, who paid adult film actor Stormy Daniels 130,000 dollars (£102,000) during the 2016 presidential campaign to suppress her claims of an extramarital sexual encounter with Mr Trump years earlier.