Georgia [US], March 15 : Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can stay as the prosecutor in the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump, only if she removes the special prosecutor with whom she had a romantic relationship, Judge Scott McAfee ruled on Friday, CNN reported.
After more than two months marked by a flurry of court motions and hearings, the sprawling conspiracy case against Trump and his 2020 allies can now proceed - depending on Willis' decision.
Though the ruling helps bring to a close a contentious two-month detour, it leaves a stain on one of the four prosecution teams pursuing charges against the former president.
While McAfee ruled Willis can stay on the case, the recent public hearings on the disqualification matter surfaced highly personal revelations that could influence how the public - and potential jurors in Atlanta - view the prosecution going forward.
McAfee was highly critical of Willis and Wade's relationship, describing it as being the result of "bad choices."
"This finding is by no means an indication that the Court condones this tremendous lapse in judgment or the unprofessional manner of the District Attorney's testimony during the evidentiary hearing," McAfee wrote.
However, the judge wrote, "Georgia law does not permit the finding of an actual conflict for simply making bad choices - even repeatedly."
The judge further described Willis' testimony last month during one of the hearings over whether to disqualify her as "unprofessional."
McAfee said that while Willis kept no records of payments she says she made to Wade in reimbursements for vacation travel the two took together, her claim that she paid him back in cash "was not so incredible as to be inherently unbelievable."
"Such a reimbursement practice may be unusual and the lack of any documentary corroboration is understandably concerning. Yet the testimony withstood direct contradiction, was corroborated by other evidence," CNN quoted McAfee as saying.
On the other hand, Ashleigh Merchant, attorney for Trump co-defendant Mike Roman, initially alleged that the Willis and Wade relationship was a "conflict of interest" and claimed they lied about it when it began.
Citing financial statements turned up in Wade's divorce proceeding, Merchant claimed Willis financially benefited when Wade took her on lavish vacations after she hired him as special prosecutor in late 2021 as the investigation into Trump and his allies was heating up. Willis denied there was anything improper about their relationship.
Notably, when Fani Willis was elected to the District Attorney position, she inherited a backlog of more than 16,000 cases, in part because of delays caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
She chose to dedicate much of her energy on what she believed was the "most important case": prosecuting Trump for his attempts to steal the Georgia election in 2020. Willis spent three years on her investigation, securing 19 indictments after almost a half-year-long special purpose grand jury process, as reported by CNN.
In August 2023, Trump was booked into the Fulton County Jail on 13 counts stemming from his efforts to reverse Georgia's 2020 presidential election result including racketeering, conspiracy charges and soliciting a public official to violate their oath of office.
The indictment charged Trump with "unlawfully soliciting" Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to violate his oath of office and help him flip Georgia's results in the 2020 election.
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