One of the co-defendants in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ sprawling RICO case — against former President Donald Trump and several of his top associates — claimed in court filings this week that Willis had an “improper” relationship with one of the prosecutors in the case.
The court filing claims that special prosecutor Nathan Wade, a private lawyer, paid for vacations that he allegedly took with Willis using funds his law firm received from the county as compensation for his work on the case. His firm has been paid approximately $650,000.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted that the motion, filed on behalf of defendant Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign official “offers no concrete proof of the romantic ties between Willis and Wade, except to say ‘sources close to both the special prosecutor and the district attorney have confirmed they had an ongoing, personal relationship.'”
The motion seeks for the charges to be dismissed against Roman and for Wade and the entire D.A.’s team to be “disqualified from further prosecution of the case,” the AJC added.
The motion claimed that some of the alleged activity could constitute “honest services fraud, a federal crime in which a vendor gives kickbacks to an employer.”
The report noted that motion could have been filed to “simply muddy the waters by questioning Willis’ professional ethics.”
A spokesperson for Willis said that the D.A.’s office will respond to the allegations “through appropriate court filings.”
Multiple co-defendants in the case have flipped and have agreed to testify against the others. Some of those who have flipped include multiple attorneys who represented Trump after the 2020 election, including Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, and Kenneth Chesebro.
Trump released a campaign ad back in August that included a claim that Willis “got caught hiding a relationship with a gang member she was prosecuting.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said that the ad misrepresented a report from Rolling Stone to make the implication that she had an affair with a gang member.