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      Nearly half of US wants Trump election subversion verdict before November, poll says

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      Nearly half of those in the US want to see Donald Trump’s 2020 election subversion case resolved before the former president runs for the White House again in November, according to a poll published on Monday.Meanwhile, a quarter of Americans do not think Trump will ever concede if he loses a second time to Joe Biden, said the survey, commissioned by CNN.The survey in question found that 48% of those polled believed it was “essential” for there to be a verdict before November’s election. Another 16% said that they would at least prefer to see one.CNN’s poll also showed that expectations Trump would concede if he loses have dropped from 37% to 25% since October – and more than three-quarters (78%) think the former president would try to pardon himself of federal charges stemming from his presidency if he wins another stint in the Oval Office.Trump has been performing strongly in polls as compared with Biden. A survey by NBC News released on Sunday found that Biden is beset by a deficit of 20 percentage points against Trump in his handling of the economy, despite signs that the US may have achieved an almost unique “soft-landing” after a government and consumer spending boom during the Covid-19 pandemic.The poll also found that fewer than three in 10 voters approve of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Gaza war. And Biden lags Trump by 16 points on the perception of competence and effectiveness, a reversal from 2020.But the question of Trump’s legal quagmire hangs over Biden’s unfavorable polling. The former president is facing more than 90 criminal charges accusing him of trying to illegally nullify his defeat by Biden, illicitly retaining government secrets after leaving the White House and making illegal hush-money payments to an adult film actor who has claimed an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump.If Trump is convicted of a felony, the poll found, a five-point lead for Trump flips to a two-point lead for Biden.Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.On Friday, the US district judge Tanya Chutkan formally postponed the federal election interference case against Trump over which she is presiding. It was scheduled to begin in March, but that date has been pushed back while a Washington DC appeals court weighs arguments from the Trump legal team that he is immune from prosecution for actions taken while he was president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIf the DC appeals court rejects Trump’s appeal, it will probably advance to the US supreme court, meaning further trial delays.Public desire for a resolution to that case before the November election comes as recent polling by Bloomberg found majorities of voters in seven key swing states would be unwilling to vote for Trump if he is convicted of a crime (53%) or sentenced to prison (55%) in one of the four cases against him overall.But, according to CNN, views of Trump’s efforts to stay in office despite his 2020 defeat in effect remain unchanged from the summer of 2022, with 45% of US adults saying he acted illegally, 32% unethically, and 23% that he did nothing wrong at all. More

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      US judge delays Trump’s federal 2020 election subversion trial

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      A US judge has formally postponed Donald Trump’s trial on federal charges that the former president sought to overturn the 2020 election results.The trial was due to start on 4 March in Washington before the delay ordered from the federal judge Tanya Chutkan.Trial delays in general are not unusual in court cases. The delay in Trump’s trial in particular stems from an appeal by the ex-president that claims he is immune to prosecution for actions taken while he was in the Oval Office.Chutkan had indicated in January that Trump’s original trial date – chosen last summer – would not hold because the case had been frozen by the former president’s appeal.The judge has prohibited prosecutors from filing motions while the appeal is pending and made clear that Trump’s legal team would get a full seven-month period to prepare for the trial. Any time between December and the end of the appeals process would not count against that preparation period, Chutkan has also said.Trump has been grappling with more than 90 criminal charges in various jurisdictions for subversion of the 2020 election, illegal retention of government secrets after he left the Oval Office, and hush-money payments to an adult film actor who has alleged extramarital sex with him.Separately, he has also been ordered to pay about $88m in damages to the former Elle columnist E Jean Carroll after having been found liable of sexually abusing her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s as well as defaming her.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionReuters contributed reporting More

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      Fani Willis confirms relationship with prosecutor on 2020 Trump election case

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      The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, and Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor working on the case against Donald Trump and 14 other defendants, confirmed for the first time on Friday they had a romantic relationship. But they denied any wrongdoing and Willis said she should not be disqualified from the case.“In 2022, District Attorney Willis and I developed a personal relationship in addition to our professional association and friendship,” Wade wrote in an affidavit attached to a 176-page motion Willis filed in court on Friday. Notably, Wade said the relationship developed after he was hired to work on the Trump case in 2021.Willis wrote in the filing she had no personal or financial conflict of interest that “constitutes a legal basis for disqualification”. She urged Judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing the case, to dismiss a request to disqualify her without a hearing, currently set for 15 February.“While the allegations raised in the various motions are salacious and garnered the media attention they were designed to obtain, none provide this court with any basis upon which to order the relief they seek,” she wrote.Michael Roman, a seasoned Republican operative and one of the defendants in the wide-ranging racketeering case against Trump and associates for trying to overturn the election, is seeking Willis’s disqualification. He alleges that Wade used money he earned from his work in Willis’s office on the case to pay for vacations for the two of them. Trump and Robert Cheeley, another defendant, have also joined Roman’s request to dismiss the case.Legal experts are largely dubious of Roman’s request to disqualify Willis.“The filing effectively ended any question I had about what Judge McAfee should and will do. The motion to dismiss and disqualify will be roundly and easily rejected. My only question now is whether other defendants will slowly back away from the Roman motion given how effectively the DA dispatched with the allegations of serious wrongdoing,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a law professor at Georgia State University.But the confirmation of a relationship with Wade could still do serious harm to Willis in terms of the politics of the case, undermining the credibility of her judgment in the public’s view. The fact that Willis did not disclose the relationship publicly before Roman’s filing, and did not respond to the allegation for weeks, could also leave the impression she was trying to conceal it from public view. Trump, who has already taunted Willis over the relationship, is also likely to dig in.Meanwhile, even though he may not have done anything wrong legally, some experts have called for Wade to step aside in order to protect the public perception of the case.There is no evidence that the relationship resulted in any financial gain for Willis, the district attorney wrote in her filing. She noted they had no joint bank accounts or shared expenses and were not financially dependent on each other. While Wade has purchased travel for Willis with his personal funds, she also noted that she had done the same for him.“Financial responsibility for personal travel taken is divided roughly evenly between the two, with neither being primarily responsible for expenses of the other, and all expenses paid for with individual personal funds,” Willis wrote in the filing.A personal relationship between two lawyers also is not enough to disqualify a prosecutor, Willis wrote. She noted that some of the lawyers for various defendants in the case were either married or in a personal relationship. She noted Roman had offered no evidence their relationship affected prosecuting the case in any way.“The existence of a relationship between members of a prosecution team, in and of itself, is simply not a status that entitles a criminal defendant any remedy,” she wrote.Willis also rebuffed an additional argument by Trump’s attorneys that she should be disqualified because of comments she made at a Black church saying attacks on her were racist. Trump had used those comments to suggest the prosecution against him was racially motivated.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The motion makes no serious legal argument, establishes no violation of any ethical rule, and makes no real effort to link the public statements to the legal standard for disqualification,” she wrote. “Instead, much like the motion advanced by … Defendant Roman, Defendant Trump’s motion appears designed to generate media attention rather than accomplish some form of legitimate legal practice. It should be dismissed out of hand.”Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead attorney in Fulton county, dismissed Willis’s filing.“While the DA admits to an intimate relationship with her employee Special Asst DA Wade, she fails to provide full transparency and necessary financial details. Indeed, she says absolutely nothing about the so-called ‘coincidence’ of Wade filing for divorce the day after the DA hired him!” he said in a statement.“Most significantly, and disingenuously, the DA attempts to explain and downplay her ‘church speech’, by preposterously claiming that her racially charged extra-judicial comments were somehow not about the case or the defendants, and that her intentional injection of racial animus in violation of her ethical responsibilities as a prosecutor should simply be ignored,” he added.“Apparently, the DA believes she can make public out-of-court statements about race, this case, and the defendants whenever she wants, and the court is powerless to punish her by disqualification.”Shortly after the filing, Trump distorted what Willis had said into falsehoods and used it to attack her. In a post on Truth Social, his social media platform, he said: “By going after the most high level person, and the Republican Nominee, she was able to get her ‘lover’ much more money, almost a Million Dollars, than she would be able to get for the prosecution of any other person or individual. THAT MEANS THAT THIS SCAM IS TOTALLY DISCREDITED & OVER!”Willis’s filing on Friday details how Wade stepped away from lucrative other legal work to handle the case and took on a reduced governmental rate to work on the case. More

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      Fani Willis: what does relationship with Trump prosecutor mean for Georgia case?

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      The case brought against Donald Trump in Georgia is a powerful, sprawling indictment that charges the former US president and his top allies with violating the state’s racketeering statute over their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.In January, the case was roiled by an explosive complaint filed by Trump’s co-defendant Michael Roman, who alleged that a secret personal relationship between the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, and her deputy Nathan Wade, amounted to a conflict of interest that warranted their disqualification.The latest twist in the weeks-long saga came on Friday, when Willis acknowledged in a court filing that she had a relationship with Wade, but that it began after he had been retained to work on the Trump case.Here’s what you need to know.What has just happened?Willis and Wade, a special prosecutor working on the case against Trump and 14 other defendants, confirmed for the first time on Friday they had a romantic relationship. Previously, evidence had emerged in Wade’s divorce proceedings that he had used some of the more than $650,000 he earned from his work for her to pay for vacations for the two of them. Bank records showed Wade had paid for tickets for the pair to go to California in 2023 and Miami in 2022.What do the Trump team argue?Trump’s allies and lawyers allege that the relationship between the district attorney and one of her top prosecutors on the team is an improper one that affects the investigation. That is important as the Georgia case was seen as a powerful blow to the former US president, with a strong chance of finding him guilty for his actions in 2020. Because the case is in Georgia state court, it is also immune from Trump’s interference should he win the 2024 election.What could that mean for the case?There is little doubt that Trump’s lawyers will now seek to exploit this situation and use it to undermine the credibility of the case and delay the proceedings. But experts have generally been skeptical the relationship will result in disqualification or getting the case removed.Even if nothing were to happen legally because of the scandal, it offers huge political ammunition to Trump to argue that the case is flawed and motivated by politics and personal ambition. In an election year, that could be crucial.What does Willis say?Willis wrote in the Friday filing that she had no personal or financial conflict of interest that “constitutes a legal basis for disqualification” and urged McAfee to dismiss the request to disqualify her without a hearing.She noted that Roman had failed to offer any evidence that the relationship affected any decisions of the case. The mere existence of a relationship, she wrote, was not grounds for disqualification. She noted that some of the defense lawyers in the case were married or had personal relationships.She also noted that neither she nor Wade benefited financially from the prosecution. The two do not have a joint bank account or other shared expenses. And when they travel together for personal reasons, they split the costs and bear their own expenses, her office wrote.“While the allegations raised in the various motions are salacious and garnered the media attention they were designed to obtain, none provide this Court with any basis upon which to order the relief they seek,” she wrote.What happens next?A hearing has been set for 15 February by the Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing the case. McAfee is expected to decide based on the evidence presented then whether Willis should be disqualified, either because he finds there is an actual conflict of interest, or because he finds an appearance of impropriety, a lower standard that has been previously used in some cases.If McAfee decides to reject Roman’s motion to disqualify Willis, Roman could challenge his ruling at the Georgia state court of appeals, a move that would almost certainly delay the case by weeks or months, setting back the start of a potential trial. A trial date has not been set for Trump and his co-defendants.If McAfee decides to grant Roman’s motion and relieves Willis and her office from prosecuting the case, it would be handed to the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia, which would then appoint a replacement prosecutor. More

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      Trump ally Jim Jordan subpoenas Fani Willis for potential grant money misuse

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      The US House judiciary committee has subpoenaed Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, for records related to the use of federal grant money in prosecutions and the potential misuse of those funds.The subpoena escalates the conflict between Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican congressman, judiciary committee chair and ardent defender of Donald Trump, and Willis, whose office charged the former president and 18 others with 41 counts over interfering with a Georgia election and illegally attempting to undo Biden’s victory in Georgia.Willis responded to the subpoena on Friday. She said: “These false allegations are included in baseless litigation filed by a holdover employee from the prior administration who was terminated for cause. The courts that have ruled found no merit in these claims. We expect the same result in any pending litigation.”She went on to tout the office grant programs and said they are in compliance with Department of Justice requirements.The back and forth between Jordan and Willis began last year with correspondence Jordan sent on 24 August, the day Trump stood for a mugshot at the Fulton county jail. Jordan’s letter suggested Willis had subjected Trump to “politically motivated state investigations and prosecutions due to the policies they advanced as president”, and that any coordination her office had with federal prosecutors may have been an improperly partisan use of federal money.Willis’s scorching response in subsequent replies said the inquiry offends principles of state sovereignty and the separation of powers; that it interferes with a criminal investigation; that Trump is not immune to prosecution simply because he is a candidate for public office; and that Jordan himself was “ignorant of the US constitution”.The Republican-led committee opened a formal investigation into the Willis’s office in December.Willis has been under fire over the past month after allegations of an improper relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom she hired to work on the Trump case in Fulton county.Jordan sent a letter to Nathan Wade on 12 January, asking for his cooperation in his committee’s inquiry into “politically motivated investigations and prosecutions and the potential misuse of federal funds”. The letter notes Wade’s billings for meetings with the federal January 6 committee, which the letter characterizes as partisan. “There are open questions about whether federal funds were used by [Fulton county] to finance your prosecution,” the letter states.Willis responded on Wade’s behalf 12 days later.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Your letter is simply a restatement of demands that you have made in past correspondence for access to evidence in a pending Georgia criminal prosecution,” she said in the reply.“As I said previously, your requests implicate significant, well-recognized confidentiality interests related to an ongoing criminal matter. Your requests violate principles of separation of powers and federalism, as well as respect for the legal protections provided to attorney work product in ongoing litigation.” More

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      Prosecutor in Trump racketeering case subpoenaed to testify in disqualification hearing

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      The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, and Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor in her office, have both been subpoenaed to testify at a 15 February hearing seeking their disqualification from the criminal racketeering case against Donald Trump and 14 others for their efforts to overturn the election.It is not guaranteed that either will actually testify. Both could seek to quash the subpoena.Michael Roman, a seasoned Republican operative and a co-defendant in the case, is seeking the disqualification of Willis and Wade and a dismissal of the indictment. He alleges the two had a romantic relationship and that Wade used the money he earned from his employment in her office to pay for vacations. Trump and another defendant, Robert Cheeley, have both joined the request.Experts generally consider disqualification unlikely, but Willis has not directly responded to the allegation. She has said she will respond in a court filing that is due on Friday.Roman filed a new lawsuit on Tuesday accusing Willis’s office of failing to comply with a public records request and failing to turn over records related to the hiring of Wade and other special prosecutors. The lawsuit says Wade and Willis have both been subpoenaed to testify at the 15 February hearing.Wade’s office has told multiple news outlets that it has provided all the information that Roman and his lawyer, Ashleigh Merchant, have requested. The district attorney also reportedly sent a letter to Merchant on Friday saying they “disagree with your disingenuous implication” they had failed to meet their obligations. A spokesperson for the office also told ABC News it had not been formally served with the lawsuit on Wednesday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWade had been set to testify as part of an divorce case on Wednesday, but settled it on Tuesday evening. Willis had also been subpoenaed in that case. More

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      Prosecutor in Trump elections case will not have to testify on alleged romance

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      Nathan Wade, the lead prosecutor in the case against Donald Trump over his alleged plot to overturn the 2020 election has entered into a “temporary agreement” with his estranged wife, according to a filing posted on social media. This agreement means that special prosecutor Wade will avoid having to testify in a court hearing that was scheduled for Wednesday.During the now-canceled hearing, Wade was expected to shed light on his financial dealings and purchase of plane tickets for himself and Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis in 2022 and 2023, according to the Washington Post. The pair have been under increased scrutiny since 8 January when Michael Roman, a veteran Republican operative and one of the former president’s co-defendants filed a motion to Fulton county’s superior court that sought to disqualify Willis and Wade from the case.Roman alleged that the pair were in a romantic relationship and that Wade, who was hired by Willis, used his attorney’s fees paid to him by the district attorney’s office to purchase vacations for the pair. Roman argued that while Wade was allowed to spend his earnings as he pleased, him using the money to Willis’s benefit in the form of flights and hotel stays presented a conflict of interestskip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWade’s credit statements, made public via a motion filed in his divorce proceedings, show that Wade paid for two trips for him and Willis; one to Miami in October 2022 and another to the Napa Valley in April 2023. Neither attorney has publicly confirmed or denied a relationship.Wade filed for divorce from his wife Joycelyn Wade on 2 November 2021, the day after Willis appointed him as special counsel in the Trump case, court records show. The divorce grew ugly after Joycelyn complained that her estranged husband was withholding information about his finances, including income from working on the Trump case.Willis was expected to respond to the allegations in a court filing that was due on 2 February, but the agreement between the Wades will allow her to avoid filing. More

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      Trump seeks to disqualify Fani Willis from prosecuting him in Georgia

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      Donald Trump joined a motion on Thursday seeking to disqualify the Fulton county district attorney prosecuting him over efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia after her recent remarks decrying allegations of an affair with one of her deputies.The filing, submitted to Fulton county superior judge Scott McAfee on Thursday, 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 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.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe 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. More