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    Fani Willis Hangs Onto Trump Case, but More Turbulence Lies Ahead

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    A fresh array of problems are in store for Ms. Willis and her prosecution of Donald Trump, one of the most significant state criminal cases in American history.After revelations of Fani T. Willis’s romance with a subordinate sent the Georgia criminal case against Donald J. Trump down a two-month detour worthy of a soap opera, a judge’s ruling on Friday resolved a major cliffhanger. Ms. Willis could continue prosecuting the case, so long as her ex-boyfriend withdrew from it.But the resignation hours later of the former boyfriend, Nathan J. Wade, whom Ms. Willis hired as a special prosector, only settled so much. A fresh and complicated array of problems lies ahead for Ms. Willis, and for one of the most significant state criminal cases in American history.“Her troubles are far from over,” Clark D. Cunningham, a law professor and ethics specialist at Georgia State University, said in an email on Friday.The defense effort to disqualify Ms. Willis began in early January, upending the case and making it unlikely to reach trial before the November rematch between Mr. Trump and President Biden. Any attempts to appeal Friday’s ruling by Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court could delay matters even further.Republicans have smelled blood. The G.O.P. lawmakers who dominate Georgia politics have created new ways to investigate Ms. Willis, which could potentially lead to her removal from office. And last week, a young lawyer named Courtney Kramer, a former intern in the Trump White House, announced that she would run against Ms. Willis in this year’s race for district attorney.Ms. Kramer’s campaign, while unlikely to succeed in heavily Democratic Fulton County, could amplify criticism of Ms. Willis and the case, which charges Mr. Trump and some of his allies with conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Highlights of the Judge’s Ruling on Fani Willis in the Georgia Trump Case

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      A judge overseeing the criminal election interference case against former President Donald J. Trump in Georgia declined on Friday to disqualify the district attorney leading the prosecution, Fani T. Willis, over a romantic relationship she had with the lawyer she hired to manage the case, Nathan J. Wade.But even as the judge, Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court, rejected the claim by one of Mr. Trump’s co-defendants, Mike Roman, that the relationship raised an actual conflict of interest by giving Ms. Willis a financial stake in the case, the judge also ruled that it raised “a significant appearance of impropriety.”The judge gave her two choices: either Mr. Wade leaves her prosecution team, or she and her office must step aside from the case.Here are highlights from the 23-page ruling:A combination of factors raises a legitimate question.Alone, each of the two main issues raised by the defense — that Mr. Wade is being paid by the hour, and that two members of the prosecution team were having a relationship — would not be a problem. But combined, they raise an deeper issue, the judge wrote.Financial gain was neither proven nor shown to be a motivating factor.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Prosecution of Trump in Georgia Hangs in Balance at Hearing

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      Lawyers will sum up their arguments on Friday about whether Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, has a conflict of interest and should be disqualified.A judge in the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald J. Trump is scheduled to hear final arguments on Friday on a motion to disqualify the prosecutor who brought the case, Fani T. Willis, on the ground that a romantic relationship she had with a subordinate created a conflict of interest.The presiding judge, Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court, is not likely to rule on the matter on Friday. Rather, the hearing, which is scheduled to start at 1 p.m., will allow lawyers from the two sides to sum up their arguments over a salacious subplot to the election case — one that has already caused significant embarrassment and turmoil for Ms. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney. Details of her personal life have been spilled out in the Atlanta courthouse where she had hoped to put Mr. Trump and 14 co-defendants on trial as soon as this summer.The stakes are high: If Ms. Willis is disqualified from the case, her entire office would be, too, and the case would probably be turned over to a district attorney from another jurisdiction. The new prosecutor could choose to continue the case as planned, modify the charges or drop them.Disqualification would reduce the chances that a trial would begin before the November presidential election, in which Mr. Trump is expected to be the Republican nominee.The relationship between Ms. Willis and Nathan Wade, an Atlanta-area lawyer she hired in November 2021 to manage the prosecution team, first came to light in January, in a motion filed by a lawyer for one of Mr. Trump’s co-defendants.The presiding judge, Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court, is not likely to rule on the matter on Friday.Pool photo by Brynn AndersonWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Testimony to Resume as Trump and Georgia Co-Defendants Seek D.A.’s Removal

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      A judge wants to hear more from a key witness as he weighs whether Fani T. Willis, the prosecutor who brought the case, has a disqualifying conflict of interest.The judge overseeing the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald J. Trump has ordered a key witness back to the stand, as the judge weighs whether Fani T. Willis, the prosecutor who brought the case, has a disqualifying conflict of interest.The witness is Terrence Bradley, the former divorce lawyer and law partner of Nathan Wade, whom Ms. Willis hired to manage the Trump case. The ruling on Monday by Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court is a victory for Mr. Trump and his 14 co-defendants, as they seek to have Ms. Willis, Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis’s entire office removed from the high-stakes case.The defense questioned Mr. Bradley during a court hearing earlier this month, in an attempt to find out whether Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis were being truthful about key details of a romantic relationship that developed between them, including their assertion that the romance began after Mr. Wade began working for Ms. Willis in November 2021.Mr. Bradley declined at that time to answer questions related to what he knew about the romance, citing attorney-client privilege and other rules that shield lawyers from having to disclose communications with clients.But the judge told the lawyers in the case in an email on Monday that “the court believes that the interested parties did not meet their burden of establishing that the communications are covered by attorney-client privilege, and therefore the hearing can resume as to Mr. Bradley’s examination.”Mr. Bradley could be called back to the stand to testify as soon as Tuesday afternoon, according to a number of people familiar with the case.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Messy Diversion in Georgia Trump Case Creates Perception Problem

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      Regardless of whether Fani T. Willis is disqualified from leading the high-stakes case, the extraordinary detour it has taken may have changed it fundamentally. At some point in the coming weeks or months, the Georgia criminal case against former President Donald J. Trump and his allies will presumably focus once again on the defendants and whether they conspired to overturn Mr. Trump’s election loss there in 2020. But the extraordinary detour that the case has taken, plunging into the intimate details of a romantic relationship between the two lead prosecutors and forcing them to fight accusations of impropriety, may have changed it fundamentally. Now it is unclear whether the case will even remain with Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, since lawyers for Mr. Trump and other defendants are seeking to have her entire office disqualified. Even if the presiding judge allows Ms. Willis to keep the case, she is likely to face tough scrutiny from now on, including from a new state commission that will be able to remove prosecutors and from the Georgia Senate, which has opened an investigation. The controversy has also provided fresh fodder for Mr. Trump and his allies, who are adept at exploiting their opponents’ vulnerabilities. Mr. Trump was already making inflammatory attacks on Ms. Willis even before her relationship with Nathan J. Wade, the lawyer she hired to help run the election interference case, came to light. If nothing else, Ms. Willis’s decision not to disclose her relationship with Mr. Wade from its outset has created a messy diversion from an extremely high-stakes prosecution. Even if the revelations do not taint a jury pool in Fulton County, where Democrats far outnumber Republicans and Ms. Willis has many admirers, her world-famous case could face a lasting perception problem. And if the case gets taken from her, more serious problems may follow. Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court suggested on Friday that he is likely to not rule next week on whether the relationship created a disqualifying conflict of interest. But already, state officials are considering what might happen if Ms. Willis, who has given no indication that she will step aside voluntarily, has to hand off the case to another district attorney in the state. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      After Hearing in Atlanta, Fani Willis Receives Both Praise and Condemnation

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      After a tumultuous hearing, the Fulton County district attorney earned plaudits for the way she stood firm under pressure but drew doubts about her judgment under the glare of the national spotlight.It has been a rare point of consensus about the case brought by Georgia prosecutors against former President Donald J. Trump: the Fulton County district attorney, Fani T. Willis, probably made a mistake by having a romantic relationship with a co-worker.But the agreement ends there.As people in Atlanta and its suburbs digested gripping and emotional testimony, what they saw wasn’t just the behavior of Ms. Willis, but a test for their views on race, gender, justice and the city they call home.Ms. Willis’s sharpest critics, backers of the former president, relished what they saw as the error that could pull her off the case — endangering, if not entirely torpedoing, a prosecution that some legal experts regard as one of the strongest ones against Mr. Trump.The biggest fear of some of her supporters is that those critics are correct.“I just wish she would’ve made better decisions,” said Andrea Maia, a recent college graduate living in Atlanta, who is otherwise sympathetic to and supportive of Ms. Willis. “I wouldn’t have done it.”The testimony came as part of a hearing this week to decide whether Ms. Willis’s romantic and financial relationship with Nathan Wade, an outside lawyer she hired to help lead the prosecution, amounted to a conflict of interest and whether she should be removed from the case.Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor hired by Ms. Willis, testified at this week’s hearing. Pool photo by Alyssa PointerWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      D.A. Denies Improper Relationship With Special Trump Prosecutor

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      Defense lawyers argue a romance between the Fulton County district attorney, Fani T. Willis, and the special prosecutor she hired to handle the election interference case in Georgia should disqualify them. A case charging former President Donald J. Trump and his allies with trying to subvert the 2020 election results in Georgia took a detour on Thursday into the details of the prosecutors’ romantic and financial lives — their sleeping arrangements, vacations and private bank accounts — in an unusual and highly contentious hearing.Lawyers for Mr. Trump and his co-defendants have argued that the Fulton County district attorney, Fani T. Willis, and the special prosecutor she hired to manage the case, Nathan J. Wade, should be disqualified from the case because their romantic and financial entanglements had created a conflict of interest. Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade forcefully rejected those accusations in testimony on Thursday, with Ms. Willis accusing the defense lawyers of spreading “lies.”“You think I’m on trial,” Ms. Willis told Ashleigh Merchant, a lawyer for Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign official who is a co-defendant in the case. “These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020. I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial.”The hearing, in Fulton County Superior Court, was a remarkable turn of events, as the prosecutors who have accused Mr. Trump of trying to invalidate election results were grilled by the defense lawyers about the trips they took together, their breakup and who paid for their meals and hotels. Ms. Willis took the stand after her former friend, Robin Bryant-Yeartie, testified that Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade began a romantic relationship in 2019, before Ms. Willis hired him in November 2021. Ms. Bryant-Yeartie said that it was still going on when she and Ms. Willis last spoke in 2022, just before they had a falling out.Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade forcefully rejected accusations in testimony on Thursday.Pool photo by Alyssa PointerWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      With Everything on the Line, Fani Willis Delivered Raw Testimony

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      Ms. Willis, the district attorney overseeing the Georgia prosecution of Donald J. Trump, searingly refuted allegations that she had a disqualifying conflict of interest.Fani T. Willis walked unaccompanied through the front door of a Fulton County courtroom on Thursday afternoon in a bright magenta dress and announced she was ready to testify. She was interrupting her lawyer, who at that very moment was trying to convince a judge that she should not have to testify at all.“I’m going to go,” Ms. Willis said.And so she did.For roughly three hours on Thursday, Ms. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., engaged in the fight of her life from the witness stand to try to salvage the case of her life, the prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump. In a raw performance, Ms. Willis, 52, presented herself as a woman in full — by turns combative and serene, focused and discursive (at one point she declared her preference for Grey Goose vodka over wine). Her language toggled between casual (a thousand dollars was “a G”) and precise: On numerous occasions, she prefaced her statements with variations on the phrase, “I want to be very clear.”She upbraided Ashleigh Merchant, one of the defense lawyers questioning her, alleging that Ms. Merchant’s court filings — which accused Ms. Willis of having a disqualifying conflict of interest stemming from a romantic relationship with Nathan J. Wade, the special prosecutor on the case — were full of lies. At one point her voice approached a yell, prompting Scott McAfee, the mild-mannered judge, to call a five-minute recess in an apparent effort to cool things down.Elsewhere, Ms. Willis chided Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Steven Sadow, when he asked if she had been in contact with Mr. Wade in 2020. Noting that Mr. Wade had cancer at the time, she said, “I am not going to emasculate a Black man.” She spoke of giving Mr. Wade a trip to Belize for his 50th birthday — earlier in the day, Ms. Merchant had asked Mr. Wade about the couple visiting a tattoo parlor there. She also admitted, in a digression that the lawyers’ questions did not seem to prompt, that she thought Mr. Wade had a sexist view of the world, and said it was the reason they broke up last summer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What Happens if Fani Willis Is Disqualified From the Trump Case?

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      The stakes will be high on Thursday when a judge in Atlanta seeks to determine whether the Fulton County district attorney, Fani T. Willis, should be disqualified from leading the prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump on election interference charges.If Judge Scott McAfee determines that Ms. Willis has a conflict of interest because of her romantic relationship with the prosecutor she hired to manage the case, and that it merits disqualification, his decision would, by extension, disqualify her entire office.The case would then be reassigned to another Georgia prosecutor, who would have the ability to continue with the case exactly as it is, make major changes — such as adding or dropping charges or defendants — or to even drop the case altogether. The latter decision would end the prosecution of Mr. Trump and his allies for their actions in Georgia after the 2020 election, when the former president sought to overturn his loss in the state.It would be up to a state entity called the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia to find someone else to take up the case. More specifically, the decision would fall to the council’s executive director, Pete Skandalakis, an experienced former prosecutor.In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Skandalakis said that he could ask a prosecutor to take on the Trump case voluntarily. But he could also appoint a prosecutor to do the job — whether they wanted to or not.Mr. Skandalakis said he could also try to find a lawyer in private practice to replace Ms. Willis. But that is an unlikely scenario, he said, because he could only pay such a lawyer roughly $70 per hour.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More