The judge overseeing the Georgia election fraud case against former President Donald Trump has convened a hearing alleging that District Attorney Fani Willis and the lead prosecutor had an inappropriate relationship.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee scheduled a hearing for Feb. 15 and set a deadline for Willis to respond to the charges by Feb. 2. The Washington Post reportedhe said, citing the court order.
The accusation that Willis had an inappropriate relationship with special counsel Nathan Wade was made last week in a filing by Trump co-defendant Mike Roman.
Roman, who served as President Trump's election day operations manager in 2020, asked the judge to disqualify the entire prosecution team.
“…Although the District Attorney chose to appoint her lover, the person involved in this prosecution has always been a married person,” the filing alleges.
He also cut off some of the roughly $654,000 in legal fees that Wade, a private attorney with the Atlanta-based firm Wade & Campbell, collected from the Fulton County Prosecutor's Office for his work on the Trump case. , accused Willis of using it to take him on vacation. California, Florida, and the Caribbean. ”
However, despite Roman's claims, the motion did not present any hard evidence of the alleged relationship. Wade has been working on his divorce since 2021 and needs to complete the divorce process.
In a speech Sunday at Big Bethel AME Church, Mr. Willis called Mr. Wade a “superstar” and “a great friend and a great lawyer,” but did not mention him by name. She also suggested that the charges against Wade were race-related.
“I think it’s on their playing field that I always think I need someone from some other jurisdiction in some other state to teach me how to do the job that I’ve been doing for almost 30 years. ?'' she said, noting that two other white prosecutors involved in the case emerged unscathed.
Mr. Roman disputed that claim, noting that the other two special prosecutors had “no ties” to Mr. Willis.
Roman is one of 14 remaining co-defendants in the high-profile extortion case in which Trump and his associates allegedly rigged the 2020 presidential election.
The Feb. 15 hearing now threatens to publicly humiliate Willis in a televised courtroom and possibly derail the investigation altogether, The Washington Post noted.
