The judge rejects the attempt to remove prosecutor Willis from the case against Trump for electoral fraud in Georgia | USA Elections

The case once morest former President Donald Trump for electoral fraud in the State of Georgia received a fundamental ruling this Friday to move forward. The prosecutor who charged him and 18 other suspects, Fani Willis, will be able to continue leading the case: the judge responsible has considered it not proven that the romantic relationship, now over, between Willis and the special prosecutor she hired in the case, Nathan Wade, constituted a conflict of interest, as the defense alleged. But the judge does not completely vindicate the representative of the public ministry. He considers that there is the “appearance” of an improper situation that requires one of the two prosecutors to have to leave the case. Wade submitted his resignation a few hours following the court decision.

In a 23-page ruling, Fulton County Judge Scott McAffee finds that following a two-week hearing in February, Trump’s lawyers “have failed” to demonstrate a conflict of interest. “The district attorney has not behaved in any way consistent with the theory that she organized a financial scheme to enrich herself,” he writes. But he – he clarifies – the case has revealed “a significant appearance of an improper situation that contaminates the current structure of the Prosecutor’s Office team. An appearance that must be corrected.”

For this reason, “the district attorney may choose to resign, with her entire team, and let the Council of Prosecutors appoint others responsible” for the case, McAffee writes. “Alternatively, Wade can withdraw, which would allow the prosecutor, defense attorneys and the public to continue without her presence or remuneration distracting and ultimately jeopardizing the merits of the case.”

Prosecutor Wade was quick to react. A few hours following the judge’s ruling was made public, he submitted his resignation from the case in an open letter. “I offer my resignation for the good of democracy, in dedication to the American public and so that this case moves forward as quickly as possible,” the legal expert indicated in his letter, released by the Fulton Prosecutor’s Office.

The judge’s decision represents a harsh setback for Trump, who in his four pending legal cases seeks to at least delay the respective trials until following the November elections. For Willis it is an important victory on a personal and professional level, but a pyrrhic victory. The February hearing in Fulton County — where Trump and his colleagues will have to answer to accusations of creating a mafia association to falsify the 2020 election results — brought to light numerous details regarding his private life. . At one point, during her testimony, she remembered: “They are not judging me. “It is those people (Trump and those accused with him) who are going to be tried for trying to steal an election.”

These details may continue to be very present in the public opinion as the process progresses. Willis already suffered a setback in the case once morest Trump this week at the hands of McAffee. The judge withdrew six of the charges brought once morest the accused – of them, three affected the former president – considering that the Prosecutor’s Office had not justified them sufficiently, although he left the door open for them to be re-presented with better arguments.

Harassment and threats

The case will have consequences. Throughout the two years of investigation into the case, Willis, the first African-American to head the Fulton Prosecutor’s Office, has suffered acts of harassment of all kinds, including racist ones, and threats once morest her life. As was evident at the February hearing, the harassment was such that she forced him to temporarily move house.

It is possible, on the one hand, that Trump and the rest of the defendants will appeal McAffee’s decision. On the other hand, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp approved a state law this week that allows investigations of local prosecutors who are suspected of acting for improper reasons. Republican legislators in that state have already indicated that they plan to open an investigation once morest Willis, who is a Democrat. A local parliamentary committee has already opened its own hearing into the allegations once morest the two prosecutors.

The scandal broke out in January, when the lawyers of Mike Roman, one of the defendants in the electoral fraud case, denounced the existence of the romantic relationship between Willis and Wade and assured that it constituted a conflict of interest. The prosecutor, they maintained, received an economic benefit for hiring her then boyfriend in November 2021, who with his salary as a special prosecutor — he has earned $650,000 (regarding 600,000 euros) during this time — paid for a series of luxurious vacations for both of them. in places such as the Bahamas, Aruba or the Californian valley of Napa during the development of the investigation once morest the former president.

The two legal experts admitted the relationship, but denied that it had generated a direct or indirect economic benefit for her. Willis insisted that she had paid her share of the cost of the vacation, although always in cash because she—she maintained—her father accustomed her as a child to having a substantial amount of cash on hand for emergencies.

Regarding this point, Judge McAffee considers this practice “understandably worrying,” because there are no receipts to support the prosecutor’s claims. But he also acknowledges that Willis’s explanations “are not so far-fetched as to make them incredible.”

Throughout the hearing, one of the big points of conflict between prosecutors and Trump’s defense was the moment in which the romantic relationship began, which ended last year. Willis and Wade testified that it began in 2022, following he was hired for the case in 2021. The former president’s lawyers considered that statement “not true” and, as such, sufficient to decide the disqualification of the district attorney.

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