Here’s why she’s facing questions over her conduct with a colleague.
The fate of a top Georgia prosecutor — and a sprawling criminal case involving former President Trump — hangs in the balance.
In a high-stakes hearing on Thursday, Atlanta Judge Scott McAfee was tasked with weighing whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be disqualified from leading the prosecution of former president Trump’s 2020 election interference case. The source of the strife is allegations that she had an improper relationship with fellow prosecutor Nathan Wade.
While Willis and Wade admitted to having a “personal relationship,” they maintain that they were just friends when Willis hired Wade in November 2021 to help investigate Trump and 18 of his allies over their efforts to reverse President Biden’s win.
But defense attorneys argue the pair got together earlier than they claim. They say Willis hired Wade after the pair were already romantically involved, and have accused the state’s top prosecutor of benefiting financially from the case. (Willis has vehemently denied both of these claims.)
As the challenge plays out, here’s what we know about Willis and Wade’s relationship and why prosecutors believe their relationship created a conflict of interest.
What’s Fani Willis being accused of?
The allegations surrounding Willis and Wade first surfaced on Jan. 8, when one of Trump’s co-defendants, Michael Roman, motioned to dismiss the charges against him and to disqualify Willis and Wade from prosecuting the case.
In a bombshell legal filing, he and his lawyer Ashleigh Merchant accused the two prosecutors of being romantically involved before Wade was hired as an outside lawyer to help with the Georgia election case. One of Willis’ former friends and co-workers, Robin Yeartie, backed up this claim, testifying that she saw the couple hugging and kissing before Wade was officially hired for the job.
They also claim that Willis improperly benefited from the relationship — bank records released as part of Wade’s messy divorce from his ex-wife show he bought airline tickets for trips with Willis to San Francisco, Miami, and Aruba during their probe of Trump.
Meanwhile, the former president has seized on these revelations. On his platform “Truth Social,” he alleged that Willis and her “lover” tried to enrich themselves and “perpetrated a conspiracy” by interfering with the 2024 race.
What have Fani Willis and Nathan Wade said about their relationship?
The pair are no longer together. During her testimony on Thursday, Willis said her romantic relationship with Wade ended in August 2023 before former president Trump and his allies were indicted by her office in August 2023.
But they have put up a united front in pushing back against these accusations of misconduct. In a sworn statement, Willis said her relationship with Wade first began in March 2022, after he was hired as special prosecutor. Though they often shared travel expenses, she said they never lived together or shared their finances.
During Thursday’s hearing, Willis took the witness stand and adamantly pushed back at what she described as “lies” from prosecutors. “Do you think I’m on trial? These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020. I’m not on trial no matter how hard you try to put me on trial,” Willis told Merchant.
Similarly, Wade asserted the relationship didn’t predate his hiring and they shared expenses for trips roughly equally. However, there wasn’t always a record of what they split because he said Willis sometimes paid him back in cash. “Our relationship wasn’t a secret. It was just private,” he told Merchant during Thursday’s hearing.
What happens if Willis is disqualified from Trump’s case in Georgia?
If Roman is successful in making his case, Willis will be disqualified — as well as the entire district attorney’s office. The case would then be reassigned to another Georgia prosecutor, who could continue the case as is, make changes to it, or even drop the whole thing altogether.
The Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia — specifically executive director Pete Skandalakis — will be tasked with finding someone else to take the case but his options are limited. In an interview with The New York Times, he said he could ask a prosecutor to volunteer for the job or he could make an appointment, which wouldn’t give them a choice. The third and least favorable option is he could find a lawyer in private practice to take over Willis’ position, but he could only pay around $70 per hour. If all of these lead to a dead end, Skandalakis could appoint himself as the new prosecutor on the case.
The decision is also tricky from a political standpoint. Though Skandalakis is considered fair by Democrats in the state, he’s also been criticized for not moving fast enough to find a prosecutor to consider whether Georgia’s Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones should face charges related to the Trump case.
But picking a replacement comes with its own risks, too. The two main district attorney’s offices in the state that have enough resources and staff to take on Trump’s case are in DeKalb and Cobb counties, which are headed by Democrats.
