The decision of whether or not to disqualify Georgia's Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade from the criminal prosecution of former President Donald Trump and others over alleged appearances of impropriety and conflicts of interest is now in the hands of the presiding Judge Scott McAfee.
Trump reiterated his demand that Willis and Wade be disqualified, and the underlying charges against him be dropped, in a fiery social media post Saturday that called out the prosecutors over their revealed "sexcapades" and questioned the integrity of her claim that she repaid her "lover" for everything with cash, The Hill reported.
The post took issue with the incredulous rebuttals from Willis to allegations first raised in January by co-defendant Michael Romans, who accused Willis of improperly hiring Wade, with whom she had an undisclosed romantic relationship, and of improperly benefiting financially from the taxpayer-funded arrangement.
In a Truth Social post on Saturday morning, former President Trump wrote, "WHERE DID FANI GET ALL THAT CASH? NO WAY SHE PAID HER LOVER, 'PROSECUTOR' NATHAN WADE, BACK. SHE MADE UP THE CASH STORY WHEN SHE REALIZED THAT HER 'SEXCAPADES' WERE PAID FOR BY THE PEOPLE OF GEORGIA."
"AGAIN, WHERE’S THE CASH, AND WHERE DID IT COME FROM?" he continued. "THE FACT IS, THERE WAS NO CASH PAID, THAT WAS JUST AN EXCUSE SHE MADE UP AFTER SHE GOT CAUGHT. THE CASE CAN’T BE CLOSED UNTIL THIS IS DETERMINED."
"In any event, they were lovers and friends long before this Witch Hunt was started. THEY WANTED MONEY AND FAME!" Trump added. "Worked with Biden’s DOJ (spent days with them in D.C.) in going after Crooked Joe’s Opponent, ME. Terrible stuff! THIS CASE MUST BE DROPPED -- A GREAT EMBARRASSMENT TO GEORGIA!"
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that DA Willis, in response to the allegations that she improperly benefited financially from her relationship with Special Prosecutor Wade, who paid via credit card for numerous vacations for the pair -- including cruise ship tickets plus travel and lodging expenses on multiple occasions -- asserted during a mid-February evidentiary hearing that she had reimbursed him for everything with cash.
Wade testified to the same thing when he faced questioning, and attributed the purported habit to her "independent, strong woman thing," while Willis further asserted more broadly that she paid for virtually everything with cash as a normal routine.
Of course, there are no receipts for any of the alleged cash reimbursements from Willis to Wade, and even some of the prosecutor's own supporters, to say nothing of her critics, have expressed some disbelief about her dubious and unverifiable cash repayment claims.
Primarily at issue in all of this, according to a CBS News report on Friday's closing arguments in Judge McAfee's courtroom, is the question of when the now-admitted romantic relationship between DA Willis and Wade actually began, as they both testified under oath that it didn't start until after she hired him to work on the Trump case in November 2021.
However, per the defense attorneys, and citing testimony from former friends of the two prosecutors plus Wade's cellphone records, the duo began dating long before Willis hired Wade, potentially as far back as 2019, which if true would suggest that both committed perjury by lying under oath.
After Friday's proceedings, Judge McAfee said he would render a decision within two weeks on whether or not to disqualify Willis, Wade, and the entire Fulton County DA's Office from the case. If that occurs, the underlying charges wouldn't be dismissed, but rather the case would likely be shifted to another prosecutor in another county to pick up and continue.
As for the final accusation in Trump's Truth Social post, that DA Willis and Wade were working with President Joe Biden's Justice Department as part of the broader politically motivated "witch hunt" against him, Fox News reported in January that Wade's own billings with the Fulton County DA's Office support that notion of a state-federal cooperative effort.
On at least two occasions in 2022, well before the criminal indictment was issued in August 2023, Wade billed the county for meetings he held with White House lawyers, and while the exact subject of those discussions remains unknown, it is not a stretch to suspect it likely involved the case against Trump and could have involved some measure of coordination with the federal efforts to prosecute the former president for similar alleged criminal conduct following the 2020 election.
