Fani Willis admits her affair with special prosecutor

What does it mean for her case against Trump?

You have to hand it to the voters of Fulton County, Georgia. They sure know how to pick sleazy district attorneys.

For two decades, they picked Paul Howard, Jr. In 2020, when the voters finally turned him out, Howard was under investigation by a federal grand jury for his use of grant money from the City of Atlanta to nonprofits under his control. One of those non-profits paid Howard at least $140,000 in city grant money.

In addition, he had been accused of 12 public disclosure violations by the state ethics commission. The accusations followed media reporting on discrepancies between personal financial disclosures Howard filed with the state and tax filings submitted to the IRS by a nonprofit he heads. Howard agreed to pay a $6,500 state ethics fine for failing to disclose his role as a CEO for two non-profits.

Howard was also being investigated for the way grand jury subpoenas were issued by his office in the Rayshard Brooks case. That case itself was a farce, the prosecution of which helped undermine policing in Atlanta.

To complete Howard’s trifecta of sleaze, three one-time employees of his office filed separate lawsuits alleging that he sexually harassed and/or discriminated against them. Howard prevailed at trial in one of the cases. I don’t know what happened in the other two.

Fani Willis defeated the scandal-plagued Howard in 2020. She received national (and even international praise) after she filed a ridiculous RICO case against Donald Trump.

One fan of Fani gushed that she’s “extremely honest.” Another called her “transparent.”

But now we know that Willis has been having an affair with Nathan Wade, the married attorney she plucked from private practice to serve as special prosecutor in the Trump RICO case. We know that Wade had no experience relevant to handling this complex case. And, although Willis and Wade deny it, there’s evidence that he’s been spending money on Willis.

We also know that the “extremely honest” Willis promised during her 2020 campaign not to date any of her subordinates. “I will certainly not be choosing to date people that work under me,” she declared.

Today, Willis admitted that she certainly has chosen to date the special prosecutor working under her. However, Willis claimed that she and Wade, whom she hired in 2021, did not begin their romantic relation until 2022.

That might be true. However, Ed Morrissey, quoting CNN legal analyst Elie Honig, points to circumstantial evidence that it isn’t.

For one thing:

Why did Willis hire Wade to lead the Trump case? Rather than picking any of the dozens of deeply experienced trial prosecutors in the Fulton County DA’s office, Willis instead hired Wade and two other outsiders. This kind of thing happens sometimes if the prosecutor’s office doesn’t have the right people to handle the case or needs some specific expertise. But Wade is conspicuously underqualified for this particular assignment. According to his own website, he has primarily practiced personal-injury and family law.

Well, his defenders [including Willis] note, the man was a judge and a prosecutor. With all due respect: not really, or not in any way that would prepare him for the task at hand. Wade held those titles only at the municipal level, handling petty misdemeanors or less. He has never — repeat, never — tried a single felony criminal case. Yet Willis selected him to lead the most complex and important racketeering case in Georgia history? Something’s up.

For another:

Why has Wade been paid so much money? Like the other two outside attorneys working the Trump case, Wade earns a set hourly rate of $250. Over the past two years, the other contract lawyers have billed the DA for about $73,000 and $90,000, respectively.

[Wade has billed] over $653,000. Perhaps he has worked more hours than his colleagues, but seven to nine times more?. . . Wade once billed the DA’s office for 24 hours in a single day in November 2021.

For another, Wade filed for divorce from his wife of 26 years the day after his appointment by Willis was announced.

But let’s take Willis at her word and assume she was not romantically involved with Wade when she hired him. The relationship is still problematic.

As Morrissey explains:

Even if the relationship started after that, continuing Wade’s contract employment still would be inappropriate, at the least. Most organizations would require such relationships to end or the workplace arrangement to end, especially when one party is an outside contractor. That becomes even more inappropriate given the thousands of dollars Wade was spending on his boss from monies he received from her via his billing.

There’s also the matter of the Georgia State Bar Rules, one of which provides:

A lawyer may accept a gift from a client, if the transaction meets general standards of fairness. For example, a simple gift such as a present given at a holiday or as a token of appreciation is permitted.

In this case, Ed reminds us:

According to the bank and travel records, Willis received a number of gifts from the attorney she hired, amounting to thousands of dollars in travel expenses. Those seem a lot more substantial than “a token of appreciation,” especially since they appear to have come from the massive amount of funds that Willis paid her ‘attorney.’

But as problematic as Willis’ conduct seems, the big question is whether it has any implications for the RICO case she has brought. That question takes me outside my areas of legal expertise.

For what it’s worth, though, I doubt that Willis’ misconduct warrants dismissing the RICO case unless it can be shown that the case was brought as part of a scheme to enrich Wade. Without better evidence that Willis and Wade had a romantic relationship at the time she decided to bring the case, I don’t see how the defendants can come close to making this showing.

As for disqualifying Willis from prosecuting this case, as I understand it, this remedy is available in “conflict of interest” cases only when the conflict might prejudice the defendants. Here, unless the case was brought to enrich Wade, I don’t see prejudice to the defendants.

Willis was disqualified from prosecuting a “Trump elector” in the 2020 presidential race because she had hosted a fundraiser for the elector’s opponent for lieutenant governor. In that case, there was an argument that the defendant was prejudiced because he was being prosecuted by an overt and avowed political adversary. This argument is not available in Trump’s case.

Even so, Willis appears to have violated ethics rules and is compromised when it comes to supervising her lover, an outside contractor (though that problem would disappear if Wade voluntarily steps aside, as he should). Thus, it seems to me that if Willis had any integrity, she would withdraw or else fire Wade.

But for decades, integrity has been in short supply among Fulton County district attorneys. So Willis and Wade will likely cling to their roles in the case, causing it to be bogged down in motions and appeals.

Meanwhile, public confidence in this strained prosecution will be compromised — as it should be, in any case.