Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Thursday was removed by a state court as prosecutor from President-elect Donald Trump’s election-related criminal case.
Willis’s Office Appeals Decision
With the decision, it places the case against Trump and more than a dozen other codefendants in limbo as the state will now have to find a prosecutor to oversee the matter.Hours after the Court of Appeals’ majority rendered their decision, the Fulton County district attorney’s office notified the courts in Georgia that she would appeal Wednesday’s ruling to disqualify her.
What Happened?
In a 2–1 decision, the appeals court judges sided with Trump and eight codefendants, who had attempted to overturn Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee’s decision in March that allowed Willis to remain on the case. McAfee had given an ultimatum to Willis and Wade: Either she step down or Wade would have to step down. Hours after the order was handed down, Wade submitted his resignation letter.Willis had been accused by Trump and his codefendants of having what they said was an inappropriate relationship with Wade and financially benefitting from the arrangement. The two confirmed they were in a relationship but denied any financial benefits and denied that it adversely impacted the case.
The court said McAfee’s remedy in handling the accusations against Willis “did nothing to address the appearance of impropriety that existed at times when DA Willis was exercising her broad pretrial discretion about who to prosecute and what charges to bring.”
What Was Alleged
Trump’s codefendant Michael Roman, through an attorney, first alleged in January of this year that Willis and Wade were romantically involved but further stipulated that they were taking vacations together that were being funded, in part, by the payment that was being given by Fulton County to Wade.Another witness, identified as a former friend of Willis, on Feb. 16 claimed in court that the relationship appeared to have begun in 2019, two years before Willis claimed it started and before Wade’s firm was hired by the district attorney’s office.
Both Willis and Wade, during a contentious court hearing weeks later, confirmed the relationship but denied any financial benefits. They also denied that their relationship started before he was hired as special counsel by Willis and said that their relationship ended in the summer of 2023.
In the hearing, Wade confirmed that he purchased plane tickets and other items, claiming that Willis paid him back in cash. The pair also admitted to having no receipts and no record of the cash repayments, with Wade saying he only had credit card statements.
What Willis Has Said
Both Wade and Willis have denied any wrongdoing, describing their relationship as normal.Willis wrote in a filing in February that she and Wade had a professional relationship when she appointed him as special prosecutor, adding that their is now a personal relationship.
Some of the suggestions about their relationship, she said, were “highly offensive.”
What Wade Has Said
After confirming the relationship, Wade told the court that he did not keep records of expenses when traveling with Willis“In relationships, ma'am, especially men, you’re not keeping a ledger,” he added.
“She’s a very independent, proud woman. She’s going to insist that she carries her own weight. It was actually a point of contention between the two of us.”
After he stepped down as special prosecutor, Wade was interviewed weeks later by ABC News and defended having a relationship with Willis.
“Workplace romances are as American as apple pie,” he said at one point. “It happens to everyone. But it happened to the two of us.”
What Trump Has Said
After the court of appeals disqualified the district attorney, Trump declared the election case was “dead” and accused Willis’s office of corruption.“The case has to be thrown out because it was started corruptly by an incompetent prosecutor who received millions of dollars through her boyfriend—who received it from her—and then they went on cruises all the time,” Trump told Fox News on Thursday.
Other Cases
Two cases brought against the president-elect by special counsel Jack Smith have effectively been wound down by his office in recent weeks, following Trump’s election victory last month.In late November, Smith’s team wrote of Trump’s federal election case in Washington that the Department of Justice determined that the agency’s Office of Legal Counsel has “prior opinions concerning the Constitution’s prohibition on federal indictment and prosecution of a sitting President apply to this situation and that as a result this prosecution must be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated.”
“That prohibition is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Government stands fully behind,” they wrote.
Smith also wrote that he would drop his appeal of a Florida federal judge’s decision in July to dismiss his separate classified documents case against Trump.
An appeals court and a U.S. district judge in Washington have since agreed to Smith’s terms to drop the classified documents case and the election case, respectively.
In May, Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection to payments he made during the 2016 election. Trump has yet to be sentenced in the case, although the Manhattan district attorney’s office has argued in recent court papers that the conviction should still stand.
