A Georgia judge on Friday rejected a bid to disqualify the top prosecutor who brought charges against Donald Trump, clearing an obstacle to a trial of the former president on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 election.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee said District Attorney Fani Willis can remain on the high-profile case, but the attorney she hired to be her lead prosecutor, Nathan Wade, must step aside.
Trump and his co-defendants in the Georgia racketeering case had been seeking to have Willis disqualified and the entire case dismissed following revelations that she had what they claimed was an “improper intimate personal relationship” with Wade.
They alleged that some of the $650,000 Wade has been paid to work on the case was used to take Willis on “lavish vacations,” including a Caribbean cruise and Napa Valley tour.
McAfee, in a 23-page ruling, said Willis had shown a “tremendous lapse” in judgment and there was a “significant appearance of impropriety,” but the district attorney can stay if Wade drops out.
“The Defendants failed to meet their burden of proving that the District Attorney acquired an actual conflict of interest in this case through her personal relationship and recurring travels with her lead prosecutor,” McAfee said.
“The Court finds the allegations and evidence legally insufficient to support a finding of an actual conflict of interest,” the judge said. “However, an odor of mendacity remains.”
The allegations of misconduct against Willis threatened to torpedo the case against Trump.
The 77-year-old has pleaded not guilty to charges of involvement in a criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election result in Georgia, where Democrat Joe Biden won by some 12,000 votes.
Trump is also facing federal charges of conspiring to overturn the election results.
Willis has asked for the trial of the former president and his 14 co-defendants to begin on August 5 — three months before the November presidential election expected to pit Trump against Biden once again — but McAfee has not yet agreed to an August start date.
Trump’s lawyers have sought repeatedly to delay his various court cases until after the November election, when he could potentially have the federal charges against him dropped if he wins.
– ‘Prosecutorial misconduct’ –
Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead counsel in the Georgia case, expressed disappointment with McAfee’s ruling saying “the Court did not afford appropriate significance to the prosecutorial misconduct of Willis and Wade.”
“We will use all legal options available as we continue to fight to end this case, which should never have been brought in the first place,” Sadow said in a statement.
Four of Trump’s original 18 co-defendants, including three former campaign lawyers, have pleaded guilty already to lesser charges in deals that spared them any prison time.
Others indicted in Georgia include former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, John Eastman, a constitutional lawyer, and Jeffrey Clark, a mid-level Justice Department official.
Trump’s federal case on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results had been scheduled to start in Washington on March 4, but has been frozen as the Supreme Court considers Trump’s claim that as a former president he enjoys immunity from criminal prosecution.
The Supreme Court has scheduled arguments in the immunity case for April 25.
A three-judge appeals court panel ruled earlier this year that a former president is not immune from prosecution for actions taken while in the White House.
Trump is also scheduled to go on trial in New York on March 25 on state charges of falsifying business records by paying pre-election hush money to a porn star.
The start of the New York case may be postponed, however, after prosecutors said on Thursday that they would accept a delay of up to 30 days to allow Trump’s defense team to examine tens of thousands of pages of new records.
Trump also faces federal charges in Florida of mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House.
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