Trump seeks to disqualify Fani Willis from prosecuting him in Georgia
Donald Trump accused on Thursday the Fulton county district attorney of inflaming racial animus to distract from allegations relating to an an affair with one of her deputies, as he joined a motion seeking to disqualify her from prosecuting him for 2020 election interference in Georgia.
The filing, submitted to Fulton county superior judge Scott McAfee, adopted and added to an earlier motion to have the district attorney Fani Willis and her entire office thrown off bringing the case.
At issue is an explosive complaint from Trump’s co-defendant and former 2020 campaign election day operations chief Michael Roman, asking Willis to be relieved because her alleged relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade created a conflict of interest.
The filing itself included no concrete evidence that might give rise to a disqualification. But exhibits in related filings – notably Wade’s divorce proceeding – has shown that Wade paid for trips with Willis to California and Florida.
Willis has not formally responded to the complaint to date, though she addressed some of the claims in a speech delivered earlier this month at a historic Black church in Atlanta, suggesting the claims were in part racially motivated.
“How come, God, the same Black man I hired was acceptable when a Republican in another county hired him and paid him twice the rate?” Willis said in her remarks, in a thinly veiled effort to defend the hiring of Wade without specifically naming him.
In the new filing joining Roman’s motion, Trump’s lead lawyer Steve Sadow contended for the first time that
Willis’s remarks, in addition to coming outside of proper court channels, were themselves improper.
“The DA’s provocative and inflammatory extrajudicial racial comments, made in a widely publicized speech at a historical Black church in Atlanta, and cloaked in repeated references to God, reinforce and amplify the ‘appearance of impropriety’ in her judgement and prosecutorial conduct,” Sadow wrote.
The district attorney’s office is expected to file a response before 2 February, ahead of an evidentiary hearing set for 15 February before McAfee in Atlanta.
The relationship between Willis and Wade threatens to undercut the Georgia election interference case against Trump and his allies because a finding of a conflict of interest could see the entire district attorney’s office disqualified from continuing with the prosecution.
The transactions from Wade’s credit card statements attached as an exhibit show that Wade paid for at least two trips during the criminal investigation into Trump that named Willis as a travel companion.
The first trip, dated 4 October 2022, involves a flight from Atlanta to Miami. Wade paid for a ticket for himself and for Willis. Separately, on the same date and without any names attached, the statement shows Wade’s credit card was used to make two purchases with Royal Caribbean Cruises, for $1,284 and $1,387.
The second trip, dated 25 April 2023, involved a flight from Atlanta to San Francisco. Wade again paid for a ticket for himself and for Willis. Separately, on 14 May 2023, Wade’s credit card was used to make two purchases of $612 and $228 at a Doubletree hotel in Napa Valley, California.
Roman’s motion claimed Willis personally profited from the contract. Wade was paid at least $653,000 and potentially as much as $1m for legal fees as one of the lead prosecutors on the Trump case, and the filing alleged Wade then paid for trips he took with Willis to Napa Valley and the Caribbean.