Legal analysts warned on Sunday that Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis used “poor judgment” amid allegations she had an affair with a special prosecutor in her office who she hired to investigate Donald Trump in his Georgia election interference case.
In an investigation launched by Willis, the former president and 18 co-defendants were indicted by a Georgia grand jury in August and face criminal racketeering charges for allegedly attempting to overturn Georgia’s electoral results in the 2020 election won by Joe Biden. However, four individuals who were indicted, but later pleaded guilty, said they’d cooperate with prosecutors. Trump, the frontrunner in the 2024 GOP presidential primary, and the remaining defendants have pleaded not guilty and have denied the allegations.
Meanwhile, Willis has found herself at the center of a potential ethics violations related to her alleged affair with Nathan Wade—a special prosecutor in her office.
The allegations were first made when former Trump staffer Michael Roman, who faces seven charges in Georgia, filed a lawsuit presented without tangible evidence alleging that Willis “engaged in a personal, romantic relationship” with Wade and “personally benefited from” the alleged affair, meaning she acted “to defraud the public of honest services.” Roman is seeking to disqualify Willis and Wade from the trial; Trump has not joined the motion. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) previously confirmed to Newsweek that it is not investigating the district attorney for alleged impropriety.
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While Willis has not commented since Friday, she has previously rejected the accusations and said her critics were “playing the race card” given that they had singled out Wade, who is Black.
Newsweek has reached out to Fulton County district attorney’s office via email for comment.
On Sunday in a column published on Just Security, an online forum for the analysis of security, democracy, foreign policy, and rights, legal analysts Norman Eisen, Joyce Vance and Richard Painter noted the allegations against Willis.
Eisen is an attorney and served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee majority during the first impeachment proceedings and trial of Trump. Vance is a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama and was nominated for that position by then-President Barack Obama.Painter is a lawyer and professor of corporate law at the University of Minnesota Law School. He also was the chief White House ethics lawyer under former President George W. Bush.
In their column titled, “Why Fani Willis Is Not Disqualified Under Georgia Law,” the legal analysts point out that while the public has not heard Willis’ side of the story, her possible transgressions represent “poor judgment” in a vital case.
“We have not yet heard that much of Willis’s side of the story. However, based on what is known so far, it represents poor judgment—especially in a case of this magnitude, even if a prosecutor’s private life is generally none of the public’s business,” the column reads.
The legal analysts also wrote that the allegations against Willis are not basis for disqualifying the district attorney from prosecuting Roman, adding that the question of disqualification under conflict of interest does not apply to this case.
“Under Georgia law, however, even if all the factual allegations regarding Willis and Wade were true, there would be no basis for disqualifying them from prosecuting Roman or any of the other defendants in the election conspiracy case,” the column states.
It continues: “As a matter of both common sense and Georgia law, a prosecutor is disqualified from a case due to a ‘conflict of interest’ only when the prosecutor’s conflicting loyalties could prejudice the defendant leading, for example, to an improper conviction. None of the factual allegations made in the Roman motion have a basis in law for the idea that such prejudice could exist here.”
The Willis-Wade relationship must now be addressed by the district attorney, Georgia Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee wrote in a recent legal filing. Willis must submit a written response by February 2 to allegations that she “engaged in a personal, romantic relationship” with Wade, which will be followed by an evidentiary hearing on February 15.
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