Clay Travis, an attorney and founder of the conservative sports news platform Outkick the Coverage, foresees Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis stepping down in the wake of allegations of her involvement with her special prosecutor.
“I think, Harris, this is a dead prosecution,” he told Fox News’ Harris Faulkner on The Faulkner Focus after calling it a “massive story” that has been downplayed by the mainstream media.
Fulton County District Attorney Willis, who brought election interference charges against former President Donald Trump and other co-defendants, was alleged to have engaged in a romantic relationship with her special prosecutor, Nathan Wade.
On Jan. 12, the House Judiciary Committee launched an investigation into the district attorney’s office’s “potential misuse of federal funds” of over $650,000 for “politically motivated prosecutions.”
The Fulton County District Attorney’s office, the committee alleged, had received around $14.6 million in grant funds from the U.S. Department of Justice between 2020 and 2023, which brings into question whether those funds were used to finance the prosecution, billing taxpayers for 24 hours of legal work in one day on Nov. 5, 2021, “attesting that you worked all day and night without break on a politically motivated prosecution.”
“I think Fani Willis is going to have to step down, and I think Nathan Wade is going to have to step down,” Mr. Travis said.
Mr. Travis said there’s also the possibility for criminal prosecution against Ms. Willis if Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and other state officials investigate the case.
Mr. Travis said Ms. Willis has tried to deflect the allegations by saying they are racist because they focus on one of the three attorneys she hired who is black.
Ms. Willis Addresses Allegations
At the Big Bethel A.M.E. Church in Atlanta on Sunday, she told a congregation, “I hired one white woman, a good personal friend and great lawyer—a superstar I tell you. I hired one white man. Brilliant. My friend, and a great lawyer. And I hired one black man, another superstar, a great friend, and a great lawyer.”To this, Mr. Travis responded, “Well, did you sleep with the other two as well?”
During her speech, Ms. Willis added that one “cannot expect black women to be perfect and save the world.”
“We need to be allowed to stumble,” she said.
Making sure one has nothing in one’s background that could impinge the prosecution is vital if one expects to carry out the “outrageous and unprecedented series of charges under Georgia state law,” Mr. Travis said.
“It’s not only impropriety,” he said. “It’s the appearance of impropriety and the appearance that Fani Willis broke up the marriage of a man she hired that she was sleeping with and paid him $650,000 in taxpayer money. That is more than enough to cause an issue here.”
The allegations stem from former Trump attorney Michael Roman, a co-defendant in the case, who made the allegation, which included Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade going on vacations together and Ms. Willis being deposed in Mr. Wade’s divorce proceeding.
Jim Trusty, a former attorney for Mr. Trump and a Justice Department prosecutor told Ms. Faulkner questioned Mr. Wade’s qualifications, stating that “he’s never tried a felony case” and “who filed for divorce the day after she appointed him to this position for which he and his firm has now billed about a million dollars.”
Former President Trump said the case is “totally compromised.”
“The case must be dropped,” he said.
‘This Is a Cut on the Case’
Mr. Travis’ opinion was shared by former U.S. Attorney Michael Moore, who told CNN that if the allegations prove to be true, Ms. Willis should resign from the case.“I’d tell her to get out of the case,” he said. “I really think that in this type of case, with these allegations, this case is bigger than any one prosecutor. And I think, probably, to preserve the case and to show that what’s of most importance to her is the facts of the Trump case, [as] opposed to her political career.”
Mr. Moore, a Democrat appointed by former President Barack Obama, said cases generally aren’t lost because of some climatic revelation as shown in movies.
Instead, they are lost by “the death of 1,000 cuts,” he said. “This is a cut on the case.”
Ms. Willis has yet to publicly deny the allegations that she was romantically involved with Mr. Wade.
In her speech, she alluded to comparisons between her scandal and those of Dr. Martin Luther King.
“Dr. King was an extremely special, brilliant, and godly man, but he was just a man, and his journey was full of mistakes,” she said.
Despite this, he overcame and made great changes in the world, she said.
“See, I know we are at a time in history where they wanna throw away books and not talk about history,” she said. “Some of y’all may have forgotten when Dr. King was alive, he was attacked for his stance on the Vietnam War. Some of y’all may have forgotten that scandal the FBI tried to do on personal indiscretions they alleged.”
The Fulton County District Attorney’s office and Mr. Wade’s office have not responded to a request for comment by The Epoch Times.
Tom Ozimek and Jack Phillips contributed to this report.
