US Attorney Fani Willis, who is leading the case against former President Donald Trump for election manipulation in the state of Georgia, has admitted to having a romantic relationship with a special prosecutor she hired. In a court document filed on Friday, Atlanta’s chief prosecutor emphasized that she and Nathan Wade were not a couple when she hired him in November 2021.
Willis asked the court to reject requests from Trump and two co-defendants to remove them from the case and dismiss the proceedings. The prosecutor explained that these applications have no basis whatsoever.
Trump then said that Willis had admitted to a “sexual relationship” with the special prosecutor she had hired “in consultation with the White House and the Justice Department” to bring him down – Trump. “This means that this scam is totally discredited and over,” the 77-year-old presidential candidate wrote on his online platform Truth Social.
Willis filed an indictment against Trump last August over the Republican’s attempts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and thus stay in power. A similar criminal case against the ex-president is also underway at the federal level, in addition to two other charges against Trump in other cases.
In recent weeks, reports of a liaison between Willis and Wade made headlines. Willis had hired Wade as a special prosecutor for the complex Trump case, as is often the case with public prosecutors in the United States. Wade, who is in the middle of a contentious divorce case, is said to have received more than $650,000 (around €600,000) for his work.
The relationship raised the question of whether Willis, in his relationship with Wade, benefited from money paid to him by the state of Georgia after he was hired by the state’s attorney general. Among other things, it was about shared private trips.
Willis now told the court that she and Wade always paid their own share when traveling together. Wade emphasized that Willis received “no funds or personal financial benefits through my position as special prosecutor.”
Trump and those around him are trying to use the relationship to discredit the prosecution. The ex-president portrays the proceedings in Georgia – as well as the other three charges against him – as an attempt by the government of his successor Joe Biden to eliminate him before the presidential election next November.
Meanwhile, the judge in charge of the federal case against Trump for election interference on Friday postponed the start of the trial, which was originally scheduled for March 4th. Federal Judge Tanya Chutkan in the capital Washington said a new date would be set at a later date.
The process is currently on hold. An appeals court is considering Trump’s request to dismiss the charges because he enjoys “absolute immunity” for actions he took while he was president. It is considered unlikely that the judiciary will follow Trump’s argument for such immunity; However, the ex-president can delay the start of the trial.
