Trump prosecutor Fani Willis will likely admit improper relationship happened but invokes 'race defense'

Nikolas Lanum
Fox News
Sat, 20 Jan 2024 19:50 UTC

© Getty Images

Fani Willis and Donald Trump

A former U.S. attorney suggested on Friday that Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis is likely conceding some allegations levied against her are true after she used race to defend a colleague she is accused of having an inappropriate relationship with.

"We've seen now it's an attack on the people who were questioning or raised the issue for further investigation, and I think that sounds a lot to me like maybe a concession that some of the allegations in the motion must be true," Michael Moore said of Willis' recent remarks on CNN, where he serves as an analyst.

Court documents filed earlier this month say Willis hired special prosecutor Nathan Wade, her alleged romantic partner, to prosecute former President Trump in Georgia's election interference case and benefited financially from the relationship in the form of lavish vacations that the two went on using funds his firm received for working the case.

Willis was recently subpoenaed to appear in court as part of Wade's divorce case. A new filing from her attorney claims Wade's estranged wife conspired with interested parties to "annoy, embarrass," and "oppress" Willis.

"Because the parties agree their marriage is irretrievably broken, there is no information that Willis could provide that would be relevant," the filing said in part.

© Megan Varner for The Washington Post via Getty Images/CNN/screenshot

ormer U.S. attorney Michael Moore said that Fani Willis is using race as a "shield" to defend herself from allegations.

Moore, a Democrat who was appointed by President Obama in 2010 and served until 2015, told CNN that while he does not think the allegations on their own will be "completely destructive" to the case against Trump, it is a "real optics problem" for Willis.

He noted that it is more likely the judge will make "short work" of the issue and will likely ask Willis to state if the allegations are accurate.

"I think the question is whether or not she hired somebody who was not experienced, does he, in fact, have a felony prosecution background to be handling this type and this magnitude of a case," he said.

Moore was then asked whether Willis could be prosecuted for honest services fraud and the federal racketeering statute after Wade was allegedly paid around $650,000 so far in the case.

He said that he thinks any prosecution of Willis would be "far down the road" but took particular issue with claims that she paid Wade 10 times as much as she paid another special assistant. Moore stressed that these disparities would have to be explained.

"No judge wants the courtroom to become a circus. The problem with these kinds of allegations is it has a tendency to make a case a circus as opposed to the facts of the case," he said.

Willis on Sunday appeared to use race to defend Wade during a speech in an Atlanta church, saying, "All three of these special counselors are superstars. But I'm just asking god, is it that some will never see a Black man as qualified no matter his achievements? What more can one achieve? The other two have never been judges. But no one questions their credentials."

Moore said he does not believe her comments are helpful in getting her motion passed to squash the subpoena.

"To see in a case like this where she makes the allegations, he's been questioned because he may be an African American male, it misses the mark. I don't think you can use race as a sword to attack somebody, clearly, nor do I think you can use it as a shield to hide behind to say, simply because you may be African American, that your activities are beyond any inquiry, especially when these allegations are made. I think that's the line she's crossed," he said.

Moore added that her "attack" made it more likely that some of the allegations may be true.

Moore previously said that Willis should step away from the case amid the allegations. He suggested that if they are true, they would challenge the integrity of the proceedings.

"Cases are not lost because of some 'Matlock' moment, some moment like you see in My Cousin Vinny, where suddenly somebody finds the evidence. Cases die by the death of 1,000 cuts. This is a cut on the case," Moore told CNN on Sunday.

© Miguel Martinez / Associated Press

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis speaks during a worship service at the Big Bethel AME Church, where she was invited as a guest speaker on Sunday, Jan. 14, 2024, in Atlanta.

Trump's co-defendant, Michael Roman, accused illis and Wade of having an "improper" and "clandestine" affair at the same time appointments were being made for the 2020 election interference case.

Roman was a former official on Trump's 2020 campaign and argued about the integrity of the case being compromised because of the affair, asking last week for the charges to be dropped.

The filing also calls for the entire district attorney's office, including Willis and Wade, to be disqualified from prosecuting the case.

Moore said he would tell Willis to step away from the case.

"I really think that in this type of case, with these allegations, this case is bigger than any one prosecutor," Moore added. "And I think, probably, to preserve the case and to show that what's of most importance to her is the facts of the Trump case, opposed to her political career."

News broke that Trump was indicted by Willis in August, and he pleaded not guilty to charges related to allegedly attempting to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, including violation of Georgia's anti-racketeering law.

Comment: The New York Times adds:

The estranged wife of a special prosecutor accused of having a romantic relationship with Fani T. Willis, the Atlanta district attorney who hired him, offered evidence on Friday that Ms. Willis accompanied him on trips unrelated to their work: leading the Georgia case against former President Donald J. Trump.

A court filing from Joycelyn Wade, who is in divorce proceedings with the prosecutor, Nathan J. Wade, included what it said were statements for a credit card account belonging to Mr. Wade. The statements showed that he bought plane tickets for himself and Ms. Willis, including tickets to San Francisco from Atlanta purchased on April 25, 2023, and to Miami from Atlanta purchased on Oct. 4, 2022.

The release of the credit card statements follows a motion filed last week by Michael Roman, one of Mr. Trump's 14 co-defendants in the Georgia case. That motion, which did not include any proof, claimed that Ms. Willis was having a romantic relationship with Mr. Wade that began before she hired him in 2021 to manage the high-profile case. The motion also stated that Mr. Wade, who has been paid more than $650,000 by the district attorney's office, paid for vacations with Ms. Willis.

The motion argued that Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade had violated state rules of professional conduct, as well as local and federal law, and had created a conflict of interest that should result in both of them, and Ms. Willis's office, being removed from the case.

The credit card statements appear to give weight to some of the claims in Mr. Roman's motion, which said that Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis "have traveled personally together to such places as Napa Valley, Florida and the Caribbean," and that Mr. Wade "has purchased tickets for both of them to travel on both the Norwegian and Royal Caribbean cruise lines."

Adding to the scrutiny of the prosecutors, the chairman of the audit committee of the Fulton County board of commissioners sent a letter to Ms. Willis on Friday demanding that she turn over information about payments to special prosecutors and their professional experience.

And The Gateway Pundit:

Startling revelations out of Fani Willis' office suggesting an improper romantic relationship giving rise to an irremediable conflict of interest between Georgia's District Attorney and the special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, should result in the entire case's dismissal, without prejudice.

The allegations of impropriety between Willis and Wade, whom Willis' team contracted in November of 2021, are legion, and include not only an inappropriate romantic relationship, but also serious allegations of self-dealing that involves Willis abusing her public office for lavish vacations, federal funding, and myriad other ethics violations.

The fiery allegations percolated to the surface after Mike Roman, one of the 17 co-defendants implicated in the Willis indictment, raised them in a January 8^th court filing seeking to dismiss the grand jury indictment in toto as fatally defective and disqualify the district attorney's office from further prosecuting the matter.

Roman's explosive motion highlights improprieties that run the gauntlet from improper romantic relations to breaches of the District Attorney's Loyalty Oath to egregious instances of self-dealing, most of which can be independently corroborated through adjacent court filings. The misconduct is so severe and persistent that it likely imputes Fani Willis' whole office.

[...]

In other words, even the simple appearance of impropriety is sufficient to disqualify an officer from a proceeding whereby such misconduct could raise significant doubts about the integrity and fairness of the process at large.

Indeed, Wade regularly vowed to this standard himself: for example, according to the Marietta Daily Journal, in 2016, Wade stated publicly that "If there's an appearance, just a mere appearance of impropriety, and there's a request for recusal, just do it, because by not doing it, what you're doing is hurting the county in the long run, you're costing the taxpayers a lot of money."

[...]

So, what are the facts? Willis appointed Wade to her legal team in late November 2021. Wade had previously described himself as a "divorce lawyer" with "decades of experience" handling divorce cases. As far as managing complex, high-profile criminal prosecutions, his resume was patently deficient - and the revelations that have since come to light only confirm that lack of experience.

Wade's inexperience alone raises serious due process questions about the Special Prosecutor's ability to run perhaps the most consequential criminal prosecution in American history, which implicates a President of the United States on fundamental questions of election integrity, among other constitutional issues.

Wade, having never prosecuted anything beyond petty misdemeanors before, is scandalously unqualified for a national criminal prosecution of such historic magnitude involving a President of the United States. That Willis would appoint someone with so little experience, a fact that neither Wade nor Willis disputes, to a criminal prosecution of such significance, is absolutely staggering - and raises grave concerns about her own aptitude, let alone significant violations of fundamental procedural (and even substantive) due process rights.

A day after Willis appointed Wade to her team, Wade filed for divorce from his wife of more than 24 years, Joycelyn Wade. This past week, Politico reported that Wade's divorce proceeding was unusually acrimonious, and even resulted in a contempt order lodged against Wade by the judge presiding over that case. The contempt order resulted from Wade having "'inadequately responded' to his wife's discovery requests."

Part of that discovery request involved an order requesting Wade "to turn over a host of financial documents, including all income statements since 2016." If Wade had refused to turn over such documents, the judge presiding over the case threatened him with contempt and sanctions, which ultimately were filed against Wade.

There are two points worth underscoring with this divorce proceeding. First, contempt orders are extremely rare for divorce proceedings. This is because parties are typically given ample opportunities to reply in divorce proceedings, so it rarely gets to the point where a judge actually has to threaten disciplinary action, let alone order an official filing against a party for misconduct.

To do so, the violations must be so severe, so unconscionable, as to leave the court, having exhausted all other judicial remedies, no choice than to recommend disciplinary action. In Wade's case, his wife's discovery request alleged that "Plaintiff ha[d] not produced one single document evidencing this income." The fact that Wade was subsequently hit with a contempt order by the judge would seem to confirm that fact.

[...]

... Willis should have at least been aware of major issues concerning Wade's character - made even more shocking by the fact that Wade himself was a divorce lawyer for decades, and thus, presumably, was keenly aware of how these proceedings worked. Once those revelations came to light, Willis should have immediately fired Wade.

She also should have immediately recused herself for a dereliction of her oath of office and her constitutional duty to maintain the highest ethical standards possible, particularly on a case of such national-profile, by appointing a Special Prosecutor so flawed in manner of character and professional experience.

Second - and this is where things go beyond the pale - that same report said that Wade's ex-wife claimed that she had absolutely no idea that he was assigned to work as the lead prosecutor on Trump's case by Fani Willis' office until he was forced by the court to disclose such financial disclosures because of the contempt order from his divorce proceeding.

In other words, Wade was covering up decisive information about his personal finances from his own ex-wife, who, she claimed, had been given "nearly nothing" in financial support. Considering Wade's lengthy, decades-long experience overseeing divorce cases, his professional misconduct here, so appallingly derelict, necessarily borders on criminality.

What makes the latter point so troubling? Well, for starters, it ties into various other serious allegations of self-dealing and profiteering from abusing Willis' government office.

For instance, less than two months after the divorce court granted Wade's wife's request to reopen discovery, Joycelyn Wade told the court "that her husband earned almost $700,000 for his work on the Trump case since May of 2022."

This is corroborated by claims made in Roman's motion to dismiss, which stipulated that "the special prosecutor has been paid an estimated $1,000,000.00 in legal fees" since Willis tapped Wade as special prosecutor (page 6 of the filing). Arguably even more troubling is the fact that since Wade was appointed special prosecutor, he made various trips to Washington, DC, and even held meetings at Biden's White House and with the January 6^th Committee.

Since those facts came to light, House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan "launched an investigation into Willis for accepting more than $14.6 million in grant funds from President Joe Biden's Justice Department (DOJ) between 2020 and 2023," according to Breitbart. The same article stated "[t]he timeframe of the funds suggests the DOJ granted Willis federal funds to finance former President Donald Trump's prosecution."

The timetable runs in lockstep with the trips Wade made to Washington, DC, as recounted in the billing records detailed in the Mike Roman filing, on pages 13-15. Hence, the old saying "if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck" would appear to ring true here: all the evidence would seem to point in the direction that Willis' office was coordinating - perhaps even conspiring - with Biden's Justice Department, receiving millions of dollars to prosecute their leading political opponent in Donald Trump.

[...]

Ultimately, should cooler heads prevail, the only acceptable outcome is that Willis, Wade, and their office's racketeering scheme be put to a swift and consequential end. The misconduct, self-dealing, and rank corruption out of Fani Willi's entire office is simply too egregious to ignore. And what has been reported publicly likely only scratches the surface.

Stephen Gillers, a professor emeritus at New York University Law School, nobody's idea of a bastion of conservatism, and expert of legal and judicial ethics stated point blank: "Willis was conflicted in the investigation and prosecution of this case," and that "...the public and the state, as her client could not have the confidence in the independent judgment that her position required her to exercise."

In short, Fani Willis must recuse herself, at the bare minimum, from this action - and let someone without all her baggage take the reins.

Social media sleuths get digging: