Judge Scott McAfee has ruled in Georgia that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office can continue prosecuting Donald Trump and his co-defendants, but only if special prosecutor Nathan Wade steps down.
In his Friday ruling, McAfee wrote that the defense had failed to meet its burden proving that Willis “acquired an actual conflict of interest in this case through her personal relationship and recurring travels with her lead prosecutor.”
But the judge went on to write that the record in the case highlighted “a significant appearance of impropriety that infects the current structure of the prosecution team — an appearance that must be removed through the State’s selection of one of two options.”
Those options are 1) for Willis, along with her whole office, to step aside, which would mean the case would be reassigned by a state panel to another office or prosecutor. The second option is 2) for Wade to withdraw, which McAfee wrote would allow “the District Attorney, the Defendants, and the public to move forward without his presence or remuneration distracting from and potentially compromising the merits of this case.”
Defendants in the election-related racketeering case against Trump and others argued that Willis and her office should be disqualified from the case, alleging a conflict of interest or at least the appearance of one. They argued that Willis improperly profited from the hiring of Wade, with whom she had a romantic relationship, and that it gives the elected district attorney an impermissible stake in the prosecution.
Days of publicly broadcast hearings on the matter before McAfee featured dramatic and salacious testimony, with the parties disagreeing about, among other things, when the relationship between Willis and Wade began and the extent to which she reimbursed him for trips they took.
The allegations did nothing to change the facts of the election subversion charges against Trump and his co-defendants but imperiled the…
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