by Sharon Rondeau
(Mar. 15, 2024) — As promised Thursday night, Fulton County, GA Circuit Court Judge Scott McAfee issued a ruling Friday morning stating that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is prosecuting a RICO action against 45th President Donald J. Trump and 14 others for allegedly conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election, may continue her work on the case if she terminates the lead prosecutor she hand-picked, attorney Nathan Wade.
Conversely, the ruling states, Willis can recuse herself and her entire office, in which case Wade could remain.
In early January, an attorney for one of the defendants filed court documents accusing Wade and Willis of having become romantically involved and taking exorbitant vacations together funded by Wade’s taxpayer-funded salary and alleging it created a conflict of interest through financial benefit.
Defendant and former Trump campaign aide Michael Roman, through his attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, had consequently asked the court to removed Wade and Willis from the case and dismiss the indictment against him.
Eight other defendants in the case joined Roman’s action, including Trump.
At the same time, Wade had entered divorce proceedings from his wife of 26 years, Joycelyn Wade, whose attorney claimed her estranged husband was not forthcoming about “his true earnings” from the Trump case “in an attempt to avoid paying her fair share in their divorce.”
During hearings on Roman’s allegations last month, attorneys for Trump attempted to make the case that Willis and Wade practiced “deceit” and criticized “the state” in the way it looked at the accusations.
On Wednesday, McAfee dismissed six of the charges levied against Trump and several co-defendants, including Attorney John Eastman and former Trump personal attorney and New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, writing the allegations “contain all the essential elements of the crimes but fail to allege sufficient detail regarding the nature of their commission.”
On page 2 of Friday’s order, McAfee wrote he found a “significant appearance of impropriety that infects the current structure of the prosecution team – an appearance that must be removed through the State’s selection of one of two options.”
Arriving at his conclusion as to the remedy, on page 17 McAfee wrote, “The District Attorney may choose to step aside, along with the whole of her office, and refer the prosecution to the Prosecuting Attorneys Council for reassignment. See O.C.G.A. 15-18-5. Alternatively, SADA Wade can withdraw, allowing the District Attorney, the Defendants, and the public to move forward without his presence or remuneration distracting from and potentially compromising the merits of this case.”
Regarding the affair and its accompanying trips and vacations, McAfee did not find Willis to have “acquired a personal stake in the prosecution, or that her financial arrangements had any impact on the case” and that therefore, “the Defendants] claims of an actual conflict must be denied.”
Nevertheless, McAfee added, “This finding is by no means an indication that the Court condones this tremendous lapse in judgment or the unprofessional manner of the District Attorney’s testimony during the evidentiary hearing. Rather, it is the undersigned’s opinion that Georgia law does not permit the finding of an actual conflict for simply making bad choices even repeatedly and it is the trial court’s duty to confine itself to the relevant issues and applicable law properly brought before it.”
On page 10, on the subject of “appearance of impropriety,” McAfee wrote that, “Finding insufficient evidence of an actual conflict of interest does not end the inquiry. Our
appellate courts have endorsed the application of an appearance of impropriety standard to state prosecutors, even without any explicit finding of an actual conflict.”
McAfee, however, denied numerous claims made by the defendants, closing his ruling with, “After consideration of the record established on these motions, the Court finds the allegations and evidence legally insufficient to support a finding of an actual conflict of interest . However, the appearance of impropriety remains and must be handled as previously outlined before the prosecution can proceed. The Defendants’ motions are therefore granted in part and denied in part.”
Some believe McAfee should have removed himself from presiding over the new issue raised by Roman, to which both Willis and Wade later admitted, given that McAfee had once worked in Willis’s office and donated a small amount to her 2020 campaign.
Appointed circuit court judge in February of last year by Gov. Brian Kemp, McAfee is running his first political campaign culminating in an election in May with a recently-announced primary challenger. Willis is running for re-election and may face a Democrat primary challenger who is still weighing his options, according to 11Alive on March 8.
The U.S. House Judiciary Committee this week threatened to hold Willis in contempt for refusing to turn over documents associated with her prosecution of Trump involving the “grant funds” from the federal government.
Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH4) also claimed a whistleblower from within Willis’s office informed him that Willis “has mismanaged, mishandled and misspent allegedly federal grant dollars” in regard to the termination of an employee from that office.
Updated 9:31 p.m. EDT to reflect McAfee and Willis’s 2024 campaigns.
This isn’t even the biggest thing about this case . So when Trump and his codefendants presented mobile phone data into evidence Fulton County’s in response deemed such evidence as irrelevant. Well that was an interesting response because one’s sure when Fulton County put a lot of people in jail on that same type of evidence they probably thought it was highly relevant. So Fulton County being dismissive of the defenses evidence against Wade & Willis jeopardizes the cases of countless people were convicted and are sitting in jail right now from that evidence.
One imagines that those individuals and their attorneys are taking an active interest in that legal response and are probably filing motions right now to have their convictions either vacated or demanding new trials since Fulton County says that evidence is irrelevant.
Who knows how many of those convictions will be vacated?
If a man and a woman are have an extramarital affair with each other, aren’t they both guilty?
Indeed they are.
If the same man and woman also commit perjury during their testimony, aren’t they both more guilty?