ATLANTA– Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis may prosecute Donald Trump on charges that he meddled in Georgia’s 2020 election, now that a special prosecutor with whom she had a romantic relationship has withdrawn from the case.
But the long-term effects of the allegations of impropriety that have roiled the case for weeks remain to be seen, with Trump and his allies certain to continue attacking the legitimacy of the prosecution against the former president and eighteen others.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee ruled Friday that Willis can stay if special prosecutor Nathan Wade leaves. That was a partial victory for Willis, whose lawyers had insisted she dropped the case because of her relationship with Wade.
But the judge also reprimanded Willis for her “massive” error in judgment and questioned the veracity of Wade’s and her testimony about the timing of their relationship.
It’s an extraordinary decision in a case that has taken on a soap opera atmosphere in recent weeks as prosecutors who vowed to hold Trump accountable found their own personal lives thrust into the spotlight.
Here are some key takeaways from the judge’s ruling:
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The judge’s ruling left it up to Willis to decide whether she — and her entire office — would step aside or whether Wade would withdraw from the case. The judge said the prosecution could not move forward until one of these two actions was taken.
Just hours after the verdict was handed down, Wade tendered his resignation and Willis accepted.
If Willis had instead chosen to step aside, the case would have been referred to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council — a nonpartisan association of Georgia prosecutors — to be assigned to another prosecutor.
That could have turned the entire prosecution upside down. A different prosecutor could have stayed on Willis’ trail, chosen to pursue only some charges, or dropped the case altogether.
The lawyer who first revealed the romantic relationship, Ashleigh Merchant, alleged that Willis paid Wade large amounts of money for his work and then unfairly benefited from the prosecution of the case when Wade used his earnings to pay for the vacations of both of them.
Willis and Wade argued that the prosecutor received no financial benefit from the relationship and that she paid for the cases herself or used cash to reimburse Wade for travel expenses.
Judge McAfee called it “concerning” that there were no documents to support Willis’ claim that she had repaid Wade. But he said Willis’ testimony “resisted direct contradiction” and was corroborated by other evidence, including her purchase of a flight for two in 2022. That led the judge to conclude that the claim was “not so unbelievable as to be inherently unbelievable used to be.”
The judge said it is impossible to know for sure that Willis and Wade’s costs were split equally — and that Willis “may have received a net benefit of several hundred dollars.” But McAfee said the defendants had not provided sufficient evidence to prove that Willis benefited financially from hiring Wade.
Furthermore, McAfee concluded that enriching herself through her relationship with Wade was not a motivating factor in Willis’ decision to bring the case.
The judge noted that Willis was not “financially destitute or in dire need all this time,” but was making more than $200,000 a year. He also said there was no indication she was trying to prolong the case to get more money, noting that prosecutors initially wanted the case to go to trial less than six months after they filed charges.
Lawyers for Trump and others said Willis’ public statements about the case crossed the line of misconduct, saying she believed in the defendants’ guilt.
McAfee noted that he had to consider whether the comments were “part of a calculated plan” to prejudice the defendants in the minds of prospective jurors. He said the comments must be “blatantly” inappropriate to warrant disqualification.
The judge ruled that statements Willis made about the charges in the indictment, her office’s conviction record and personal anecdotes were not disqualifying. That extended to her “unorthodox decision” to speak on the record with authors of a book about the special grand jury investigation that preceded the indictment, he wrote.
A speech she gave at a historic black church in Atlanta less than a week after allegations about her relationship with Wade came to light was another matter, the judge wrote. Willis complained in those comments that people had questioned her decision to hire Wade and questioned his qualifications, seeming to suggest that the criticism stemmed from the fact that she and Wade are black.
McAfee noted that the speech did not name any defendants, did not address the merits of the allegations in the case, and did not reveal any sensitive or confidential evidence. He said he did not think this went so far as to deprive the defendants of a fair trial.
“But it was still legally inappropriate,” he wrote. “Providing this type of public comment creates dangerous waters for the district attorney to wade further into.”
He noted that it may be time for an order banning prosecutors from discussing a case publicly to avoid adverse pretrial publicity, but he said that is not the issue before him at this time.
McAfee recently made his own public statements on the matter.
He said in an interview on WSB Radio last week that he had a rough draft of his statement ready before he knew anyone was planning to challenge him in the May election and that “the outcome will not change because of politics.” When a WSB-TV reporter approached him on the sidelines of a Rotary Club luncheon Thursday, McAfee said the ruling would be announced Friday and that “no statement of mine will ever be based on politics.”
McAfee was appointed to his seat by Georgia’s Republican governor and will face two challengers in the May elections. The race is nonpartisan, but Fulton County is a Democratic stronghold.
Wade was questioned on the stand about statements he made in his divorce case that he had not had a romantic relationship with anyone other than his wife during their marriage. His “patently unconvincing explanation” for these inaccuracies “indicates a willingness on his part to improperly conceal his relationship with the district attorney,” McAfee wrote.
McAfee also found himself unable to answer a central question during the hearing: whether Willis and Wade began their romantic relationship before she hired him. Neither side provided sufficient evidence to reach a conclusive decision, he wrote.
But he said, “there remains a stench of falsehood.” He wrote that “reasonable questions” about whether Willis and Wade testified truthfully about that timing “further support the finding of an appearance of impropriety and the need to make proportionate efforts to remedy it.”
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Richer reported from Boston.