Donald Trump, his close allies, and attorneys are exploring ways to weaponize recent, unverified claims that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has engaged in an “improper relationship” with a special prosecutor working for her.
Though the veracity of the allegations is unknown, Trumpland is already discussing different ideas for marshaling considerable resources to try and dig up even more dirt on, among other things, Willis’ “sex life and… her money” in an effort to shut down the criminal case against the former president and his associates, says an attorney close to Trump.
On Monday, a lawyer for one of Trump’s co-defendants, former campaign aide Michael Roman, dropped a bombshell in the Georgia election interference case — alleging that Willis has been romantically involved with her office’s special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, who has been paid $654,000 so far for his work on the case, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Citing “sources close to both the special prosecutor and the district attorney,” the former Trump aide’s lawyer argued in a motion that Willis has personally and illegally benefited from this arrangement, and that she and Wade should be disqualified from prosecuting the case.
Roman was charged alongside Trump in a sweeping indictment alleging that he, Trump, and 17 others violated the state’s racketeering statute while attempting to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, among other alleged crimes.
There is no proof yet that these claims are accurate, and Willis has not yet responded to them. That hasn’t stopped Trumpworld from rushing to capitalize on the allegations — which they hope will allow the former president and his associates to shut down the criminal case that presents one of the most serious threats of actual prison time for Trump.
Adding to the intrigue, the Wall Street Journal reported that Willis received a subpoena on Monday to testify in Wade’s pending divorce case in Georgia’s Cobb County. The divorce proceedings remain sealed.
Since Monday, according to two sources with knowledge of the internal conversations, the ex-president’s attorneys and advisers have discussed potentially joining in the Trump co-defendant’s motion. The discussions remain preliminary and fluid.
As the Trump team weighs how to handle the allegations in court, some legal and political advisers to Trump are also discussing possibly assigning a team specifically devoted to further investigating Willis’ alleged “improper” relationship with her fellow top Trump prosecutor, as well as tracking down new leads on other possible conflicts or embarrassing secrets related to her office, the sources add. This week, opposition researchers connected to Trump’s inner orbit scoured social media to find, research, and potentially contact people who know the special prosecutor and the ex-spouse, to try to uncover additional damaging information.
Furthermore, House Republicans have been quietly discussing whether they should expand their investigation of Willis to include digging into her alleged “improper” relationship and other matters related to the special prosecutor assigned to the election interference case, according to a source familiar with the situation and another person briefed on it.
Republican lawmakers have been investigating Willis over, for instance, claims that her prosecution of Trump is “politically motivated” and that her office has been “colluding” with the House committee that probed the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol.
Moreover, at least one longtime Trump adviser has told him that if the judge doesn’t remove Willis from the prosecution — thus opening the door for a conservative replacement — MAGA allies could mount pressure campaigns to hound Georgia Republican officials, such as the state’s attorney general, to launch their own investigations of Willis and her alleged romantic partner.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), one of Trump’s most fervent allies in Congress, has already moved to apply that pressure. In a letter to Gov. Brian Kemp and Georgia Attorney General Christopher Carr published on Wednesday, Taylor Greene asked that the two order an “immediate and formal criminal investigation into the alleged criminal misconduct” by Willis and Wade.
For months, Trump and a handful of his lawyers and aides were vaguely aware of rumors about Willis, including whispers of a possibly scandalous romance in her office, a source with direct knowledge of the matter says. But those rumors, this source adds, weren’t anything nearly as specific or explosive as the allegations in the motion filed by former Trump official Mike Roman’s attorney, Ashleigh Merchant.
“Donald Trump wants more dirt on her,” the lawyer close to him says. “And it doesn’t hurt that this really could blow up Fani Willis, if the allegations are true.”
Since this past summer, Trump has gossiped to confidants about uncorroborated — and in some cases invented — details of what he calls Willis’ “wild side,” says a person familiar with the comments.
In August, the former president falsely accused the Fulton County district attorney of “having an affair with the head of [a] gang or a gang member.” Trump’s false claim appeared to result from a garbled reading of a Rolling Stone report detailing Atlanta rapper YSL Mondo’s disappointment in Willis’ transformation into a hard-nosed prosecutor after representing him in a 2019 aggravated assault case.
And yet, various Trump allies and attorneys are publicly, for the moment, holding their fire in the event the bombshell allegations about Willis are corroborated and the judge takes care of their mission for them.
While Trump quickly spread news of the claims about Willis on his Truth Social platform on Monday, the former president was conspicuously restrained on the subject during a public appearance outside a Washington, D.C. federal appeals court on Tuesday. “What [Willis] did is illegal. So we’ll let the state handle that, but what a sad situation it is,” he said, adding that the case is now “totally compromised.”
Willis has promised to “respond appropriately in court” to the motion filed by Roman’s attorney. But it’s Judge Scott McAfee who will have the final say on whether or not the allegations against her have merit.
“If you’re moving to disqualify a prosecutor for a conflict of interest, you file a motion and it’s the trial court judge who decides whether or not it’s a conflict of interest,” explains Andrew Fleischman, a criminal defense attorney at Sessions Fleischman in Atlanta. “You have a hearing with sworn evidence and the rules of evidence apply at that hearing.”
In the event that a judge finds that Willis does have a conflict of interest in a case, no prosecutors from the Fulton County district attorney’s office would be eligible to take on the case. Instead, Georgia’s Prosecuting Attorneys Council, a state agency with the authority “to appoint substitute counsel when a district attorney or solicitor-general’s office has a conflict of interest,” would then assign the case to a special prosecutor.
“In that case, the next prosecutor can make his or her own judgment about whether to continue. But the judge could be so fed up with the circus that he makes them all start over,” Nathan S. Chapman, who teaches legal ethics at the University of Georgia School of Law, explains.
Fleischman says the scale of the effort involved in prosecuting Trump and his associates might dissuade some prosecutors from taking on the challenge. “It’s going to be really hard to find someone else who wants to take this case. It’s a case that will cost millions of dollars to prosecute and take six months to a year,” he tells Rolling Stone.
