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A judge in the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald J. Trump heard closing arguments Friday on a motion to disqualify the prosecutor who brought the case, Fani T. Willis, on the grounds that a romantic relationship she had with a subordinate created a conflict of interest.
With a landmark criminal case against a former president at stake, lawyers for Trump and his co-defendants took turns attacking Willis. John B. Merchant III, who represents defendant Michael Roman, said that if the court determines that prosecutors’ affair did not create a conflict of interest, “the public’s confidence in the system will be shaken.”
But Adam Abbate, a prosecutor in Willis’ office, called the defense effort to disqualify Willis “a desperate attempt to remove a prosecutor from a case for no reason other than harassment and embarrassment.”
Defense lawyers repeatedly asserted on Friday that the bar for disqualification should be relatively low, arguing that even the appearance of a conflict of interest should lead to Ms. Willis’ removal from the case because her actions had undermined public confidence in he. The question of whether the defense needs to show a real conflict or just the appearance of one could prove critical.
“We can demonstrate the appearance of a conflict of interest, and that is enough,” Merchant told Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court.
Trump’s lawyer, Steven H. Sadow, took up the issue, arguing that “once you have the appearance of improper conduct,” the law in Georgia is clear: “That’s enough to disqualify.”
Mr. Sadow focused on a speech given by Mrs. Willis in January at a black church in Atlanta, calling his comments a “violation of the rules of professional conduct.” His speech, at Big Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, came shortly after the conflict of interest motion was introduced.
Willis, who is Black, suggested in the speech that scrutiny of her romantic relationship with the prosecutor she hired to handle the Trump case, Nathan Wade, was racist. Some of those comments she described as part of a conversation she had with God.
“It was a calculated determination on the part of Ms. Willis to prejudice the defendants and their attorneys,” Mr. Sadow said, adding: “Can you think of anything more that would increase the defendant’s public condemnation than alleging that the attorneys Were the defenders and the defendants making their motion based on race and religion?
As Willis sat silently at the prosecution table, Abbate told Judge McAfee that appearance alone was not enough to disqualify her.
“The defense has to prove a real conflict,” Abbate said, adding that he had not done so in this case.
After Abbate attempted to bolster his argument by citing a series of previous cases in which a conflict of interest had been found, Judge McAfee interjected that “several of these cases appear to be based on an appearance of wrongdoing.” But Abbate said that in each of the disqualification cases he cited, the courts found a “real conflict” in addition to the appearance of wrongdoing.
Trump and his allies’ legal arguments were presented by a group of veteran defense attorneys who seemed fairly composed, while Abbate had a more hesitant and sometimes clumsy presentation, relying more on his recitation of precedents and cases. law.
In any case, Judge McAfee will be more interested in the substance of the legal issues than in the style of presentation. After arguments, he said he would rule in two weeks.
Friday’s hearing allowed lawyers for both sides to outline their arguments about a salacious subplot of the election case, one that has already caused significant embarrassment and turmoil for Ms. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney. Details of her personal life have been revealed in court in Atlanta, where she hoped to put Trump and 14 co-defendants on trial as soon as this summer.
The stakes are high: If Ms. Willis is disqualified from the case, her entire office will be too, and the case will likely be handed over to a district attorney from another jurisdiction. The new prosecutor could choose to continue the case as planned, modify the charges or drop them.
Disqualification would reduce the chances of a trial beginning before the November presidential election, in which Trump is expected to be the Republican nominee.
The relationship between Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade, an Atlanta-area attorney she hired in November 2021 to manage the prosecution team, first came to light in January, in a motion filed by Ashleigh Merchant , lawyer for Michael Roman, one of Mr. Trump’s co-defendants.
Ms. Merchant, who along with her husband, John Merchant, represents Mr. Roman, claimed that the affair began before Ms. Willis hired Mr. Wade. She also argued that Wade was not qualified for the high-profile job, for which he has so far been paid at least $650,000.
Ms Merchant claimed that Mr Wade and Ms Willis had engaged in a “self-employed business” because the couple went on holiday together and, she claimed, Mr Wade had paid for them.
In her January 8 filing, Ms. Merchant cited Georgia case law in arguing that the situation as she presented it met the standard of a disqualifying conflict of interest.
On Friday, Mr. Merchant told the judge that “we have a very personal financial interest here that has been expressed in terms of money received by Ms. Willis, as a result of the scheme that she organized.”
Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade have acknowledged that they had a romantic relationship. But they have said it began after Wade was hired and ended before Trump and 18 of his allies were charged in August in a sweeping indictment accusing them of conspiring to overturn Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. .
Willis said the couple roughly split the costs of trips they took together, and that Willis often used cash to pay Wade his share.
A defense attorney, Richard A. Rice, Jr., accused prosecutors during Friday’s hearing of living “Robin Leach’s lifestyle of the rich and famous” while on vacation.
But Mr. Abbate scoffed at that: “The evidence is that she stayed at a DoubleTree in Napa,” he said of Ms. Willis. “I don’t think it’s a fancy hotel.”
The judge held a series of hearings on the issue in February that at times resembled a mini-trial. Wade took the stand, as did Willis, who angrily responded to Merchant’s questions. Ms. Willis described feeling lonely after becoming district attorney, the violent threats and racist messages she had received, and her frustration that the focus on her love life had distracted the nation’s attention from Mr. Trump and the 14 co-defendants remaining after. Four of the defendants originally pleaded guilty.
At a hearing Tuesday, prosecutors’ conflicting accounts of when the affair began took center stage. Ms. Merchant called Terrence Bradley, a former law partner of Mr. Wade, to the stand, hoping to help prove that the relationship began before Mr. Wade was hired.
But Bradley provided conflicting information. Included as evidence was a text message exchange he had with Ms. Merchant months earlier, in which she said the relationship “absolutely” predated Mr. Wade’s hiring. But on the witness stand, he repeatedly said that he had no knowledge of when the affair began.
The judge will have to decide which of Bradley’s stories to believe as he weighs whether to disqualify prosecutors.
At Friday’s hearing, Sadow said Bradley’s text messages showed the relationship began before Wade was hired. But the judge seemed unsure.
“Has it ever been definitively proven how he knew this and that he really knew it?” Judge McAfee asked.
Another witness, a former friend and employee of Ms. Willis named Robin Yeartie, also testified that the relationship predated Mr. Wade’s hiring. But under cross-examination, she said that she had left the district attorney’s office on bad terms and that she was no longer friends with Ms. Willis.
On Friday, Abbate dismissed both Bradley and Yeartie as having common interests with prosecutors.
There is already some precedent within Trump’s disqualification case. In July 2022, a judge blocked Willis from building a case against Burt Jones, a fake Trump elector in Georgia in 2020, because Willis had organized a fundraiser for one of Jones’s political rivals. A year and a half after the disqualification, no replacement prosecutor has yet been appointed to continue investigating Mr. Jones, who is now Georgia’s lieutenant governor.
Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Georgia Prosecutors Council, said in a recent interview that the current situation was different from the one involving Mr. Jones and suggested it could move more quickly because an indictment has already been filed.
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