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ATLANTA — Fulton County District Attorney <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/01/09/fani-willis-fulton-county-georgia-trump-investigation/" target=_blank>Fani T. Willis</a> (D) acknowledged that she had a personal relationship with an outside prosecutor she appointed to manage the election interference case against former president <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/" target="_blank" class="contextual_link">Donald Trump</a> and his allies. But she denied claims that the relationship had tainted the proceedings.

In a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/e0d2e50a-2f0b-4e32-bf0e-e9d2f79c3a79.pdf" target=_blank>176-page court filing on Friday</a>, Willis called the claims against her “meritless” and “salacious.” She asked a judge to reject motions from Trump and other co-defendants that seek to disqualify her and her office from the case — and to do so without an evidentiary hearing. Willis denied claims of misconduct and said there was no evidence that the relationship between her and special prosecutor <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/01/14/nathan-wade-fani-willis-georgia-trump/" target=_blank>Nathan Wade</a> had prejudiced the case.

The filing included a sworn affidavit from Wade, who said there was “no personal relationship” between him and Willis “prior to or at the time” he was appointed. Wade’s affidavit said that in 2022 he and Willis “developed a personal relationship in addition to our professional association and friendship.” The filing did not say whether that personal relationship is ongoing.

Wade also denied that his role had financially benefited Willis. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/02/02/mike-roman-trump-georgia-election-case-fani-willis/" target=_blank>Mike Roman</a>, the Trump co-defendant who first leveled allegations of misconduct, accused Wade of paying for “lavish” vacations with Willis. Wade said in his affidavit that the two had split travel expenses “equally.” An attached exhibit includes receipts for airline tickets for a trip to Miami in December 2022 that Willis bought for herself and Wade.

“No funds paid to me in compensation for my role as Special Prosecutor have been shared with or provided to District Attorney Willis,” Wade said in the affidavit. “The District Attorney received no funds or personal financial gain from my position as Special Prosecutor.”

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Willis’s response has been eagerly anticipated by the defendants, their lawyers and the public at large. Even defenders of the case have conceded that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/01/21/fani-willis-nathan-wade-accusations-damage/" target="_blank">Willis damaged her own reputation and public perception</a> of the case itself by engaging in a relationship with Wade. The fate of the Georgia case now falls to Fulton County Superior Court <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/08/15/judge-scott-mcafee-georgia-trump-case/" target="_blank">Judge Scott McAfee</a>, who has scheduled an evidentiary <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/01/18/judge-orders-hearing-fani-willis-misconduct-georgia-case/" target="_blank">hearing on the allegations</a> for Feb. 15. But even if he rules for Willis and cancels that hearing, the headlines will continue.

A Georgia Senate committee is also investigating the allegations, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has referred the matter to the Georgia ethics commission for potential sanctions and has also requested that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) or Attorney General Chris Carr (R) launch a criminal investigation. In other words, the controversy is likely to swirl in public for weeks to come, with embarrassing questions about Willis’s personal life and finances potentially damaging the public’s — and a future jury’s — faith in her judgment and in the merits of the case.

The response contains numerous citations of case law that Willis claims render all three motions to disqualify her meritless. A personal relationship among prosecutors does not create a conflict of interest, she wrote.

Willis’s response came more than three weeks after <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/02/02/mike-roman-trump-georgia-election-case-fani-willis/" target=_blank>Roman</a>, a former high-ranking campaign aide during the 2020 election, alleged in a court filing that Willis was engaged in a “personal, romantic relationship” with Wade, whose firm has been paid <a href="https://opencheckbook.fultoncountyga.gov/#!/year/All%20Years/explore/0-/vendor_legal_name/Law+Offices+of+Nathan+J.+Wade/1/department_name" target=_blank>more than $653,000 </a>by the district attorney’s office since he was tapped as an outside prosecutor on the case in November 2021.

Roman claimed Willis may have broken the law by hiring Wade and then allowing him to pay for “vacations across the world” with her that were unrelated to their work on the case. Wade and Willis, Roman’s filing claimed, were “profiting significantly from this prosecution at the expense of the taxpayers.” Roman’s filing, which offered no proof to back up the sensational claims, called for the prosecutors to be disqualified and for the charges against him to be dismissed.

Roman’s motion was later joined by Trump and another co-defendant in the case, Atlanta-area attorney Bob Cheeley, who are also seeking to have Willis disqualified and charges dismissed.

Ashleigh Merchant, Roman’s attorney, filed a quick response late Friday, urging McAfee to move forward with the evidentiary hearing and accusing Willis and Wade of trying to “escape accountability” in a case where “freedom and lives are at stake.”

“If Mr. Roman had not uncovered the now-admitted personal relationship between Willis and Wade, no one may have ever known about it. That raises the obvious and important question: If they had nothing to hide in the first place because they did nothing wrong, then why did they intentionally not tell anyone about it until they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar?” Merchant wrote. “This Court cannot just take their word for it.”

Merchant has issued subpoenas for witnesses and documents for the Feb. 15 hearing to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/01/09/trump-co-defendant-georgia-accuses-prosecutors-misconduct/?itid=lk_inline_manual_20" target=_blank>back up her client’s claims of misconduct</a>. Merchant subpoenaed several banks — including American Express and Capital One — seeking financial records tied to Wade and his law firm. She has also <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/01/31/fani-willis-subpoena-hearing/" target=_blank>subpoenaed Willis</a>, Wade and nearly a dozen staffers and associates of the district attorney’s office.

The district attorney’s office intends to file motions to quash those subpoenas, according to Willis’s filing. Willis leveled withering criticism at Merchant for her attempts to probe her and Wade’s personal lives.

By issuing so many subpoenas, Willis wrote, Merchant “seemingly anticipates a hearing that would last days, garner more breathless media coverage, and intrude even further into the personal lives of the prosecution team in an effort to embarrass and harass the District Attorney personally. This is not an example of zealous advocacy, nor is it a good faith effort to develop a record on a disputed legal issue — it is a ticket to the circus.”

Until now, neither Willis nor Wade had directly addressed or denied the allegations. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/01/19/fani-willis-nathan-wade-plane-tickets/" target=_blank>Bank records made public </a>as part of Wade’s divorce proceedings showed Wade bought plane tickets for himself and Willis on two occasions — a trip to Aruba purchased in October 2022 on American Airlines, and a second trip purchased in April 2023 to San Francisco on Delta Air Lines. It is unclear if Willis reimbursed Wade for the tickets or went on those trips.

But Wade, in his affidavit, implied the two traded off paying for their joint trips using their personal funds.

“At times I have made and purchased travel for District Attorney Willis and myself from my personal funds. At other times District Attorney Willis has made and purchased travel for she and I from her personal funds,” Wade said in the affidavit, adding that he and Willis are “financially independent professionals.”

In Friday’s filing, Willis wrote that “personal relationships among lawyers … do not constitute impermissible conflicts of interest.” She pointed out that “under the standard urged” by Roman’s motion, other attorneys could be disqualified from the case — including Amanda Clark Palmer, who represents former Trump campaign attorney Ray Smith, and is “publicly known to be in a relationship” with Scott Grubman, an attorney for Kenneth Chesebro, a former Trump campaign attorney who pleaded guilty in the case last fall and has agreed to testify as a state witness in the case.

Merchant has told The Washington Post the claims against Willis and Wade were based on sources that she did not name as well as records she said had been disclosed as part of Wade’s divorce proceedings but were under seal. While some documents from the divorce were subsequently made public, discovery materials were not, including Wade’s bank statements and subpoenaed records from the district attorney’s office.

Willis noted in her Friday filing that after Wade’s divorce file was unsealed, Merchant never supplemented Roman’s motion or provided any additional exhibits that would corroborate his motion for dismissal or disqualification “despite implying to this Court that an unidentified silver bullet lay within the then-sealed divorce file.”

On Tuesday, Wade reached a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/01/30/nathan-wade-divorce-case-settled/" target=_blank>temporary settlement in his divorce case</a>, avoiding a scheduled hearing where he had been expected to be questioned under oath about his finances — including his income as a special prosecutor in the Trump case and his purchase of airline tickets for him and Willis.

Roman’s motion has proved to be both legally and politically fraught in a high-profile case that has already drawn intense public scrutiny and attacks from Trump and his supporters. The former president and his allies have seized on the details outlined in Roman’s motion, with Trump repeatedly referring to Willis and Wade as “lovebirds” and claiming “that case is totally compromised.”

After Willis’s response became public Friday, Trump posted on Truth Social that Willis’s admission of a relationship “MEANS THAT THIS SCAM IS TOTALLY DISCREDITED &amp; OVER.”

Trump’s lawyer, Steve Sadow, also weighed in with a statement saying an evidentiary hearing is still necessary, in part because Willis’s response “fails to provide full transparency and necessary financial details.”

Willis <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/01/14/fani-willis-georgia-trump/" target=_blank>indirectly addressed</a> some of the allegations leveled by Roman and other critics in a fiery Jan. 14 speech before a historic Black church in Atlanta, accusing critics of playing the “race card” by questioning her right to appoint Wade, whom she did not name but described as a legal “superstar.”

Sadow later <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/01/25/trump-fani-willis-racial-bias-georgia-election/?itid=lk_inline_manual_12" target=_blank>accused Willis of violating Georgia’s rules of professional conduct</a> in her remarks at the church, accusing her of making racially charged accusations against the defendants that could prejudice a future jury. In a filing seeking to remove Willis and dismiss the indictment, Sadow noted the maximum penalty for such a violation is disbarment.

Willis wrote in the Friday filing that her remarks “neither reference this case nor these defendants,” so to cite that as a basis for disqualification “is transparently meritless.”

“Much like the motion advanced by Defendant Roman, Defendant Trump’s motion appears designed to generate media attention rather than accomplish some form of legitimate legal practice,” Willis wrote. “It should be dismissed out of hand.”

While McAfee could find that Willis and Wade did not do anything legally wrong, Cheeley, one of the co-defendants, has pointed to an ethical misstep earlier in the Trump investigation that blocked Willis and her office from <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/25/georgia-trump-fani-willis/" target=_blank>developing a criminal case against Burt Jones</a>, a 2020 Trump elector who was later elected as Georgia’s lieutenant governor.

In July 2022, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who presided over a special grand jury that investigated 2020 election interference by Trump and his allies, disqualified Willis after she sponsored a primary fundraiser for a Democrat who went on to face Jones in the general election.

While McBurney allowed that Willis had not done anything legally wrong, the judge called it a “what are you thinking moment,” and said she had compromised public trust in the investigation.

“An investigation of this significance, garnering the public attention it necessarily does and touching so many political nerves in our society, cannot be burdened by legitimate doubts about the District Attorney’s motives,” McBurney wrote in his order disqualifying her from the case.

Attorneys for Cheeley have cited McBurney’s decision as an avenue that McAfee should consider, writing that McBurney’s ruling that the mere “appearance” of conflict disqualified her from investigating Jones and that the “appearance of impropriety” now involving Wade “requires disqualification.”

But in her Friday response, Willis argued that McBurney’s ruling on Jones should not be “binding precedent.”

“The elevated standard applied in that analysis was, respectfully, inconsistent with the actual legal standard Georgia appellate courts have applied for decades” and “sheds no light” on the current motions in the case, Willis wrote.

Willis’s response also forcefully defended Wade’s qualifications to lead the Trump case and characterized Roman’s efforts to discredit Wade professionally as “factually inaccurate, unsupported, and malicious.”

The filing contained several examples of racist emails and handwritten letters Willis has received since she launched the investigation into Trump. It says Roman’s accusation that the case has brought her personal financial gain “ignores that District Attorney Willis has attracted both positive and negative publicity related to this case, which include ongoing personal security threats, racial slurs, sexual invective, and attacks.”

One of the notes shows a photograph of Willis next to a picture of a gallows and a noose, with the phrase “I’m past the point of just wanting them in prison.” Another refers to Wade as “that black buck of yours” and ends with the phrase “SLAVERY FOREVER.”

Willis’s response also questioned the motivations behind the attacks on her and Wade, acknowledging that if she and her office are disqualified, it will be up to a state agency to find another prosecutor willing to take on the case — a process that could delay if not derail the entire case against Trump and his allies.

“The accusations brought to this Court by these Defendants on the flimsiest of factual support may cause a reasonable person to wonder [if] the Defendants’ motivation is more tactical than legal,” the filing read. “One may question whether the intent is to disqualify the prosecutor who has taken on all of the abuse to pursued justice in this case at great personal cost, only to be substituted with someone less committed to do so.”

2016 Oklahoma Book Award

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University of Oklahoma

Holly Bailey is a national correspondent for The Washington Post based in Atlanta and covering the South. She was previously based in Minneapolis, where she covered the Upper Midwest. She joined The Post in 2019 as a national political reporter covering the 2020 presidential campaign.

Holly Bailey

Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, 2022

Toner Prize, 2022

George Polk Award, 2022

University of Pennsylvania, BA in history

Amy Gardner has worked at The Post since 2005 and currently covers voting on its Democracy Team. She is part of the team that won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. She is a 1990 graduate of The University of Pennsylvania and lives in Arlington, Va., with her husband, Bob. They have two sons.

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