Trump co-defendant alleges misconduct by Fulton County district attorney
By Nick Valencia, Jason Morris, Zachary Cohen, Hannah Rabinowitz and Holmes Lybrand, CNN
(CNN) — One of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election subversion case is alleging without concrete evidence that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis improperly hired a romantic partner to help prosecute the case and has financially benefitted from his appointment.
In a bid to get the sprawling racketeering case dismissed, attorneys for Trump co-defendant Michael Roman, a campaign official for the former president in 2020, claim in court filing on Monday that Willis had a “clandestine” relationship with attorney Nathan Wade.
The filing doesn’t include direct evidence of an improper relationship between Willis and Wade. The attorneys say in the filing that unnamed “sources close to both the special prosecutor and the district attorney have confirmed they had an ongoing, personal relationship.”
In the filing, the attorneys allege Willis “violated her own county’s ethical standards and created an impermissible conflict of interest” when she hired Wade as a special prosecutor in the Georgia case “without obtaining approval prior to appointing him.”
The attorneys also say Wade is being paid far more than other prosecutors in her office and that they used the money to take vacations together to Napa Valley, Florida and the Caribbean. They allege Willis “never had legal authority to appoint” Wade in the first place and that she bypassed normal procedures for such hires.
“Wade is being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to prosecute this case on her behalf,” the attorneys write in the filing. “In turn, Wade is taking Willis on, and paying for vacations across the world with money he is being paid by the Fulton County taxpayers and authorized solely by Willis.”
Pallavi Bailey, a spokesperson for Willis, told CNN that their office will respond to Roman’s allegations “through appropriate court filings.”
Wade was brought in as a special prosecutor by Willis’ office in late 2021 as part of the Trump case and has spearheaded many of the state’s legal arguments in the courtroom.
CNN has reached out to Wade for comment.
Anthony Michael Kreis, a Georgia State University College of Law and legal analyst, told CNN the filing “probably means relatively little in terms of derailing the prosecution against Trump and his allies except to undermine its legitimacy.”
“It’s an internal conflict of interest and certainly an optics problem, if true. The biggest issue here is it will undermine the legitimacy of the prosecution just as an optical matter,” he said.
Kreis, reiterating that the filing provided no hard evidence to back up the claims, added: “I fail to see how any of this violates Mr. Roman’s constitutional rights.”
Roman is charged with seven crimes in the election case for his role in the fake electors scheme in 2020. The indictment said Roman helped organize the electors plot to attempt to overturn the presidential election results in Georgia and six other states.
On a crowdfunding site for his legal defense fund, Roman has claimed he is “innocent” and being “targeted” by the government.
Fulton County prosecutors said they want the trial to begin in early August 2024, which could potentially be directly in the middle of Trump’s presidential election campaign if he wins the Republican nomination.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
