Lawyers for former President Donald Trump and two of his co-defendants are asking the Georgia Court of Appeals to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from the election interference case saying she lied on the stand about a romance with her special prosecutor.
The first round of briefing filed this week before the appeals court accused Willis of an improper romantic relationship with Nathan Wade and contended she gave an unethical, highly prejudicial church speech in the wake of the initial accusations.
“Make no mistake: Willis, by persistently untethering herself from the legal, ethical and professional constraints of her powerful position, has decimated the integrity of these proceedings,” Trump’s brief said. “Sadly, the circumstances that require her disqualification are entirely self-inflicted wounds that were within her power to avoid. DA Willis disqualified herself.”
The filing, which was notable for its searing condemnation and biting accusations, flatly accuses Willis of falsely testifying as to when her romantic relationship with Wade began and contends that alone is cause for her disqualification. It also calls for Willis’ removal from the case for playing the race card during a speech at a historic Black church in which she said Wade was being singled out for criticism because he is a Black man.
“(A)fter the allegations came to light, the defendants watched in shock as Willis ‘cast racial aspersions’ at them on MLK weekend,” Trump’s filing said. “The circumstances of this case demand Willis’ disqualification. To decide otherwise will be taken by Willis as this court’s imprimatur of her playing the race card whenever she chooses to prejudice the defendants and defense counsel.”
The motion said Willis “untruthfully testified” about when she started dating Wade and “intentionally concealed the true nature of their relationship.”
Willis has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and said she and Wade only started dated after she hired him. The DA’s office, which recently asked the Georgia Court of Appeals to dismiss the appeal, will be filing its response in the coming weeks.
But in a statement, Trump’s lead lawyer, Steve Sadow, said the filing persuasively argues that Willis should be dismissed for misconduct “and the appearance of impropriety between her and former special assistant DA Wade, who was her lover and taxpayer-funded financial benefactor.”
Credit: Miguel Martinez
Credit: Miguel Martinez
A three-judge panel of the Georgia Court of Appeals is considering whether Willis should be removed from the prosecution of Trump and his 14 remaining co-defendants for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.
The original accusations filed in January by a lawyer for defendant Mike Roman, a former Trump campaign official, accused Willis of financially benefiting from her relationship with her special prosecutor. It noted Willis had approved more than $700,000 in legal fees for Wade, and it cited Wade’s own credit card records that showed he had paid for his and Willis’ airfare and hotels on trips to the Caribbean and Napa Valley.
Both Willis and Wade testified that Willis reimbursed Wade for her share of the vacations in cash. Fulton Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee later said that was “not inherently unbelievable.” But the judge also wrote that there were “reasonable questions” as to whether Willis and Wade testified truthfully as to the timing of their relationship and noted that “an odor of mendacity remains.”
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
In his March 15 order, McAfee said he did not find a disqualifying conflict of interest but he did find the appearance of one, telling Willis that both she and Wade could no longer be on the case. Hours later, Wade resigned and Willis and her office remained on the case. The dispute has stalled Fulton County’s election interference case, delaying the prospect of any trial until well after the November election.
In their brief filed Monday, lawyers for defendant Bob Cheeley, an Alpharetta attorney, said that didn’t cut it.
“This Solomonic choice, given to the wrongdoer herself to make, left a baby in halves and did not cure the underlying problem,” the brief said. “ ... (T)he trial court’s remedy erred by leaving the danger uncorrected there.”
Cheeley’s brief also called Willis’ testimony that she reimbursed Wade in cash a “fantastic explanation.” And it noted that Willis failed to present any bank records of cash withdrawals that could be used to document her payments to Wade for their trips.
“(T)he evidence presented showed a protracted and extensive material financial benefit to DA Willis and a coordinated effort between DA Willis and SADA Wade to hide, obfuscate and outright misrepresent the nature, inception and duration of their relationship,” the filing said. “ ... DA Willis, and thus this case, carries forward with her the continuing appearance of impropriety and dishonesty so long as she and her office remain involved.”
Lawyers for defendant David Shafer, the former chair of the state GOP, also heaped scorn on Willis’ and Wade’s behavior. They said the evidence is “overwhelming” they gave perjured testimony at the disqualification hearing presided over by McAfee. And they condemned Willis’ remarks in the church speech on MLK weekend.
“The fact that this case has been at the center of a firestorm of national media attention should not be allowed to improperly infect the disqualification analysis or to diminish defendants’ due process rights,” Shafer’s filing said. McAfee’s failure to disqualify Willis was an error, the brief contended, and it “has only emboldened DA Willis in her public quest to extra-judicially attack and malign the defendants and to irrevocably taint any potential jury pool.”
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