A Georgia court Wednesday agreed to decide whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can stay on former President Trump’s racketeering election interference case despite an affair with a top lieutenant.
In a win for Trump and his co-defendants, the Georgia Court of Appeals said it would hear an appeal of Judge Scott McAfee’s refusal to bounce Willis from prosecuting the sprawling case that accuses him of engineering a plot to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.
Trump claims that Willis’ affair with special prosecutor Nathan Wade amounted to an impermissible financial and ethical conflict of interest that should torpedo the entire case.
McAfee in March effectively ordered either Willis or Wade to leave the prosecution team to eliminate the issue going forward.
Wade later stepped aside, although this week he said the affair with his ex-boss was “American as apple pie.”
Willis insists that she still plans to bring the explosive case to trial in coming months, but McAfee has not yet set a trial date and the appeal could cause further delays.
Once the appeals court rules, the losing side could ask the Georgia Supreme Court to consider another appeal.
McAfee has said he would continue to move the case forward regardless of the appeal. But Trump or his co-defendants could ask for a stay of the case.
Trump and 18 others, including lawyer Rudy Giuliani and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, were indicted in August on racketeering charges stemming from what Willis says was a wide-ranging scheme to illegally try to overturn his narrow 2020 presidential election loss to President Biden.
Four people, including three ex-Trump lawyers, have pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors. Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty.
The tawdry allegations against the prosecution claimed that Willis hired Wade to oversee the case because he was her boyfriend and then benefitted when he paid for their lavish vacations.
Willis and Wade acknowledged the relationship under pressure from disclosures made by defense lawyers. They say they only started dating after Wade was hired, and that they split vacation costs roughly evenly.
Meanwhile, Trump won a round in an unrelated court fight when U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon indefinitely postponed his trial on charges he mishandled classified documents taken to Mar-a-Lago after leaving office under fire in 2021.
The judge’s ruling means the case, which many analysts say is stronger than than the three other criminal cases Trump faces, is very unlikely to come to trial before the November presidential election.
