Trump accuses embattled DA Fani Willis of ‘calculated plan to prejudice’ GA jurors against him in bombshell legal filing
Former President Donald Trump has blasted Fani Willis in a blistering legal filing, accusing her of a “calculated plan to prejudice” potential jurors against him and co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case.
Willis is battling to keep her job as district attorney of Fulton County overseeing the case against Trump amid a string of accusations about her relationship with the lead prosecutor in the case, Nathan Wade.
Following hearings last week, Willis made a legal filing Tuesday arguing she should remain on the case because her opponents failed to establish “an actual conflict of interest.”
However, this was quickly countered by lawyers for Trump, who claimed she had only addressed arguments about forensic misconduct.
The filing charged: “Our case implicates far more appalling and unforgivable types of forensic misconduct — deliberately stoking racial and religious prejudice against defense counsel and the defendants, testifying under oath untruthfully, and committing fraud upon the tribunal — in the prosecution of the defendants.”
Trump lawyer Steve Sadow has previously filed claiming Willis should be removed from the case following a church service where she gave a speech that appeared to claim the uncovering of her relationship with Wade was racially motivated.
The Trump filing accused her of “wantonly playing both the ‘race and religion card'” in her speech, which he claimed was “a calculated plan to prejudice defense counsel and the defendants in the minds of potential Fulton County jurors.”
The filing then accused Willis and Wade of “testifying falsely in a hearing before the Court on a material factual issue — whether their ‘personal relationship’ began before Wade was hired.”
WIllis and Wade have tesitified their relationship started in 2022 and said there was never a conflict of interest, while Trump and his co-defendants have called witnesses who gave evidence of them being romantic since 2019.
In the earlier filing, the state of Georgia argued on behalf of Willis that an elected district attorney cannot be disqualified without “a high standard of proof” illustrating that the DA either “has an actual conflict of interest or engaged in forensic misconduct.”
What to know about District Attorney Fani Willis' trial
- Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis is being accused of misusing state and federal funds, and also engaging in an “improper” relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.
- Willis admitted to having a “personal relationship” with Wade, but said it didn’t become romantic until after 2022 due to the case against former President Donald Trump.
- Willis hired Wade to work on the Trump case and paid him $654,000 in 2022, according to Trump co-defendant Michael Roman.
- Trump and his co-defendants are looking to disqualify Willis from the case and to have all charges, centered around the state’s expansive anti-racketeering RICO law, dismissed.
- The defense has presented dozens of pings from Wade’s cellphone that placed it at Willis’ rented condo prior to 2022. A former friend of Willis, who owned the condo, has testified that she saw the two of them “hugging” and “kissing” in 2019.
- On March 15, a judge ruled Willis can stay on and prosecute the Georgia election interference case against Trump and his co-defendants for allegedly trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election — if Wade steps aside.
“The State maintains that the Defendants have not established an actual conflict of interest even by a preponderance of the evidence,” the state of Georgia said in the supplemental brief.
Willis further argued there is no precedent in Georgia under which an elected DA has been ousted solely on “an appearance of” a conflict of interest or impropriety.
“The Defendants cobble together flowery, righteous quotations from inapplicable cases that may sound enticing at first but that entirely misstate the law in Georgia,” the court doc states.
Willis also said Trump’s team has failed to detail any way Willis would profit from the conviction of Trump in the case.
“The Defendants have not even alleged — and certainly have not proven — that the District Attorney received any benefit contingent upon the outcome of this case,” the brief states.
However, Sadow shot back: “While the State claims that no prosecutor has ever been disqualified in Georgia for forensic misconduct, no prosecutor in Georgia, elected or otherwise, has engaged
in misconduct like Willis and Wade have here.
“Elected district attorney/constitutional officer notwithstanding, the remedy must fit the misconduct.”
Trump and his co-defendants have accused Willis of using state money to employ Wade for her own benefit as Wade has used his pay to fund trips for the pair — thus arguing that she’s benefited regardless of the case outcome.
Willis’ filing accused Trump of trying to undermine the case against him by delaying the prosecution and eliminating a prosecutor he was not fond of.
“All criminal defendants have certain rights that must be protected by our system of justice, but among them is neither the right to be tried by a prosecutor of his choosing … nor the right to delay his prosecution for no good reason,” the court doc argues.
Judge Scott McAfee has said he plans to rule on whether Willis will stay on the case within the next two weeks.
