An Atlanta judge on Thursday will examine whether Fulton county prosecutors charging Donald Trump and his allies over efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia had improper romantic relations that merit being disqualified from bringing the case.
The eventual outcome of the hearing – expected to take over two days before the presiding Fulton county superior judge Scott McAfee – could have far-reaching implications for one of the most perilous criminal cases against the former president.
Trump’s co-defendant in the Georgia 2020 election interference case, Michael Roman, is seeking to have the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis and her top deputy, Nathan Wade, disqualified as a result of their romantic relationship because it constituted a conflict of interest.
If Roman is successful in having Willis relieved from bringing the case, it would result in the disqualification of the entire district attorney’s office, throwing into disarray a prosecution that has already been roiled politically since the allegations were made last month.
The district attorney’s office has vehemently rejected the claim that the romantic relationship gave rise to a conflict, arguing in court filings that there was no impropriety under the law and there was no financial benefit to either Willis or Wade, as has been alleged.
McAfee allowed the hearing to go forward after he decided on Monday that there was the possibility of conflict that he wanted to resolve. “It’s clear that disqualification can occur if evidence is produced demonstrating an actual conflict or the appearance of one,” he said at a hearing.
The judge is not expected to immediately rule on the matter. The anticipated two-day proceeding is what is known as an evidentiary hearing, where both sides are expected to call witnesses to testify in open court under oath.
During the potentially fraught hearing, McAfee is expected to delve into three principal issues to tackle the conflict of interest question: whether Willis financially benefited from hiring Wade, when the romantic relationship started, and whether the romantic relationship was ongoing.
The main focus of the hearing is likely the testimony of Terrence Bradley, a former partner at Wade’s law firm, and those of Willis and Wade. McAfee rejected a request from the district attorney’s office to quash their subpoenas but ruled out getting into Wade’s legal qualifications.
The allegations first surfaced in an 8 January motion filed by Roman’s lawyer Ashleigh Merchant, who complained about a potential conflict of interest arising from what she described as “self-dealing” between Willis and Wade as a result of their then-unconfirmed romantic relationship.
Roman’s filing, in essence, accused Willis of engaging in a quasi-kickback scheme, where Wade paid for joint vacations to Florida and California using earnings of more than $650,000 from working on the Trump case. The filing also alleged the relationship had started before he was hired.
The filing itself, however, provided no concrete evidence that showed alleged self-dealing. At the time, Merchant said her information was based on confidential sources and information in Wade’s divorce case. Yet when the divorce records were unsealed, there was similarly no concrete evidence.
After declining to address the allegations for a month, the district attorney’s office acknowledged on 2 February that Willis and Wade had been romantically involved but only after he had been hired as a special prosecutor, and insisted there was no financial benefit because travel costs had been split.
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The lawyer for Roman told the judge on Monday that she could undercut that characterization with testimony from Bradley. Indeed, the central thrust of the allegations appear to be buttressed by Bradley; the judge referred at one point to Bradley as the defense’s “star witness”.
But special prosecutor Anna Cross, another top deputy on the Trump case who is also representing the district attorney’s office in the matter, told the judge Bradley’s recollections were either fabricated or misrepresented, and was restricted in what he could say because of attorney-client privilege.
Whether Willis will be disqualified remains uncertain. Legal experts have generally suggested the evidence to date – there has been almost none, bar Wade’s bank statements showing he paid for a couple of trips – did not show an actual conflict of interest.
The potential problem for Willis is that she was previously disqualified from investigating the Georgia lt governor Burt Jones over a lower legal standard of “appearance of impropriety”, after she publicly endorsed Jones’s political rival in that re-election race.
The allegations have also threatened to turn the case into political theatre. Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, has derided the prosecution as scandal-plagued in addition to his usual refrain that the criminal charges against him are a political witch-hunt.
Source: Elections - theguardian.com
