By Jan Wolfe and Mariah Timms
Despite all the uncertainty in Donald Trump's Georgia election-interference case, several legal experts said one thing has become clear: Fani Willis's case has been damaged.
Willis, the Fulton County district attorney who brought the racketeering case against the former president and 18 others, might still beat the effort to disqualify her. But the ethics scandal that has hung over the case for two months has blunted momentum from notching early plea deals, experts say. It also has likely undermined her ability to obtain guilty pleas from the remaining defendants.
"The cloud that's hanging over this case -- it's a real concern and it's certainly going to stay with Willis," said Chris Timmons, a former racketeering prosecutor in Georgia who has closely followed the Trump case.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee is overseeing closing arguments Friday on a motion to disqualify Willis, who several co-defendants in the case including Trump accused of financially benefiting from the case by hiring a romantic partner, Nathan Wade, to be her top deputy on the case.
McAfee hasn't tipped his hand, and he isn't likely to issue a ruling from the bench Friday. The hearing was a tense closing salvo between defense lawyers and Willis's prosecution team, who have clashed in written motions and court testimony since early January. After a long period of silence, Willis and Wade, a private-practice lawyer, acknowledged having a romantic relationship, but denied any wrongdoing.
"Not a single shred of evidence was produced in any of the exhibits or the witness testimony showing how their constitutional rights or due process rights were at all affected by the relationship," Adam Abbate, a member of Willis's team, argued for the state Friday, referring to the defendants in the racketeering case.
The disqualification question
There is a good chance Trump and his co-defendants will lose their bid to remove Willis, a Democrat, over her romantic relationship with Wade, some legal experts said.
But the whole ordeal has enraged Republican lawmakers in the state, who have renewed efforts to form a commission that could sanction or remove prosecutors. They also formed a panel with subpoena power to probe the Willis-Wade misconduct allegations. Those efforts won't go away even if the motion to disqualify her does.
John Merchant, a lawyer for Trump co-defendant Mike Roman, who filed the motion to disqualify Willis, argued Friday that even the appearance of misconduct can set a precedent. "If this court allows this kind of behavior to go on ... the entire public confidence in the system will be shot," Merchant said.
If Willis remains on the case, the allegations will make it harder to find a jury that doesn't see the charges as tainted by Willis and Wade's romance. The court motions and proceedings on the allegations have taken months off the court calendar, making it even less likely that Willis could succeed in convicting Trump or the other co-defendants before Election Day. (If Trump wins the presidency, Willis's case almost certainly will be put on hold until his term is finished, constitutional lawyers have said.)
If Willis is disqualified, it would open up even more confusion.
Under Georgia law, disqualification of Willis would mean her entire office would also be blocked from further prosecuting the case. A state agency then would decide whether to assign the matter to another district attorney in the state.
Before the motion by defense lawyer Ashleigh Merchant, married to John Merchant, filed Jan. 8, the case appeared to be going well for the prosecution.
Willis was doing what prosecutors love to do in racketeering, or RICO, cases: get individuals lower in the hierarchy of an alleged conspiracy, in this case three Trump legal advisers, to cooperate and testify against people higher up.
The most recent plea deal was secured more than four months ago.
The scrutiny will continue
Last year, the Republican-led Georgia legislature passed a bill, signed into law by GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, that established the Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission, an eight-person panel that had the power to punish and remove prosecutors it thought were acting inappropriately.
Willis condemned the effort. The state Supreme Court denied it had authority to set up standards for the commission as defined in the law, and the effort stalled. This legislative season, legislators are pushing to remove hurdles to implementing the commission.
The state Senate has set up a different body, with subpoena power, to investigate Willis about her relationship with Wade. That committee doesn't have authority to punish Willis. Democrats have criticized the action as political.
Two complaints have been filed with the Fulton County Board of Ethics about Willis, urging the board to investigate and take action. The board is set to discuss the complaints on March 7.
Wade, who has his own small law firm, has made about $1 million working on the Trump case, according to the disqualification motion, filed by a co-defendant in the case. The court filing asserted Wade wasn't qualified for the role, noting he had never before tried a racketeering case.
Willis and Wade say the relationship ended last year but that they remain close. On the witness stand, Willis and Wade said they went on vacations together but that they generally split the cost evenly.
Credibility on the line
Willis, 52 years old, has said she began a romantic relationship with Wade, 50, in 2022. Although the two had been friends since 2019, there was no romantic relationship between them when she hired him in 2021, she added. Wade has put forth the same timeline.
Defense lawyers have questioned the timeline Wade and Willis presented of their relationship, seeking to establish that they are lying under oath.
Initially touted as the star witness for the defense, Wade's former law partner Terrence Bradley took the stand twice, on both occasions testifying he couldn't provide key details about the Willis-Wade romance. The testimony contradicted his previous statements, text messages and emails to defense lawyers before the allegations came to light.
McAfee on Friday questioned whether the out-of-court exchanges definitively showed Bradley was telling the truth at any point.
According to an exhibit filed by Trump lawyer Steve Sadow, Wade's cellphone records show his phone was stationary while connected to towers near Willis's home nearly three dozen times, including multiple occasions for several hours from the evening to late at night, in the months leading up to his hiring in 2021.
The state argued that the records were improperly entered as evidence and that Wade's phone's presence "somewhere within a densely populated multiple-mile radius," proved little.
McAfee hasn't ruled on whether the cell data can be included in the evidence.
The success of the disqualification motion could hinge on what legal standard McAfee uses in his ruling, which is expected to land in the coming weeks.
McAfee has said he could apply an "appearance of impropriety" framework, an easier bar for Willis's opponents to meet. To get Willis off the case, defense lawyers would only need to show her actions could lead a reasonable person to conclude there was wrongdoing.
But some legal observers say McAfee should apply a different test. They say the defendants need to show an actual conflict of interest arose from her relationship with Wade.
The evidence presented by the defense fell short of showing Willis had a direct financial interest in prosecuting Trump, said Anthony Michael Kreis, a Georgia State University law professor.
In the court of public opinion, where many conservatives see impropriety, some Democrats have been energized by Willis's performance on the witness stand, Kreis said.
"She was combative and hostile and, while that might not be a great demeanor for a witness, it's different for a politician," said Kreis. "She shored up her base with her defiance."
--Cameron McWhirter contributed to this article.
Write to Jan Wolfe at jan.wolfe@wsj.com and Mariah Timms at mariah.timms@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 01, 2024 15:44 ET (20:44 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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