According to a 229-page court filing that was made on Monday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis "has engaged in a pattern of prosecutorial, forensic misconduct" that necessitates her removal from supervising the Georgia case involving former Georgia GOP Chair and co-defendant David Shafer.
Ex-Coffee County GOP Chairwoman Cathy Latham, who is also a co-defendant with Trump, has adopted the motion from February 5th, and it asks to disqualify Willis' whole office and prosecution team, as The Blaze reported.
Just days prior to Shafer's most recent filing, Willis confessed to an affair with Nathan Wade, the married man she had appointed to head the Georgia case despite his apparent lack of qualifications.
This is the fourth attempt to disqualify the daughter of the Black Panther that has been filed since January 8th.
With Latham's adoption, five of the defendants in the Georgia case are now trying to have Willis removed from his position. Michael Roman, Bob Cheeley, and former president Donald Trump round out the group.
The disqualification motion filed by Roman on January 8th, which dealt with allegations of potential criminal misconduct and malfeasance by the Democrat, is largely restated in the current petition filed by Willis on February 5th, with the central argument being that "all of the causes for the disqualification are self-inflicted blows."
"The District Attorney's employment of Mr. Wade to investigate and prosecute the defendants and payments to Mr. Wade of over a half a million dollars from the Fulton County treasury while allowing Mr. Wade to pay for vacations for the District Attorney and other personal expenses constitutes a disqualifying conflict of interest as well as a violation of ethical rules applicable to attorneys and Fulton County employees, and potentially criminal laws," wrote Shafer's lawyer, Craig A. Gillen.
In Friday's state answer to earlier petitions to dismiss and disqualify, Willis's attorneys argued that their client does not have any financial or personal conflicts of interest that would necessitate her removal.
Despite Wade's assertion in an affidavit attached to Willis' Friday response that their romantic getaway expenses "were roughly divided equally between us," Shafer's motion cast doubt on that claim, asserting that publicly shared receipts demonstrate that they "are not remotely 'roughly' equal," as reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The special counsel allegedly spent $7,200 on plane tickets, hotel rooms, and cruise arrangements for vacations he had with Willis, according to receipts found in Wade's divorce lawsuit. There is a plethora of evidence that the Democratic DA's flight to Miami cost no more than $697.
After securing a higher hourly rate with Willis' office than other special counsel and billing the county for over $728,000 in legal fees, which the DA conveniently signed off on, Wade appears to have been in a strong position to pay more.
The February 5 petition, similar to Trump's request to disqualify, implies that Willis' publicly known remarks "have been severely prejudicial to the defense."
"Straying wildly from the legal guardrails which are designed to protect the accused from improper, extrajudicial comments by a prosecutor, the District Attorney, for over a year-and-a-half, has given multiple interviews where she has improperly labeled some of the defendants as 'Fake Electors' and commented on the righteousness of her investigation and prosecution," said the motion.
The lawsuit claims that the turning point came when Willis addressed a church congregation on January 14th, painting herself as a victim and suggesting that her detractors were racists.
The motion asserts that Willis' actions violated not just her oath of office, ethical guidelines, and potential jurors' impartiality, but also Georgia law pertaining to the hiring of assistant district attorneys.
In addition to the numerous calls for her resignation, Willis is currently under investigation by the Georgia Senate, the county audit committee chair is facing serious accusations of wrongdoing, there is a move to impeach her in the state legislature, and she is also under investigation by Congress.
