The Georgia prosecutor trying former President Donald Trump for seeking to overturn his 2020 election defeat acknowledged on Friday having a personal relationship with another lawyer on the criminal case but denied it tainted the prosecution.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in a court filing said claims that threatened to upend her office’s historic prosecution had “no merit.”
Trump and two co-defendants are seeking to disqualify Willis and dismiss the charges, alleging Willis benefited financially from an “improper, clandestine personal relationship” with Nathan Wade, a lawyer she hired to help lead the investigation.
“While the allegations raised in the various motions are salacious and garnered the media attention they were designed to obtain, none provide this Court with any basis upon which to order the relief they seek,” Willis said in the filing.
The case is one of four criminal prosecutions Trump faces as he closes in on the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden in November’s election. Trump has launched multiple challenges that could delay the start of any trial by weeks or months.
As he has before, Trump lashed out at Willis in a post on his Truth Social platform on Friday, saying, “THIS SCAM IS TOTALLY DISCREDITED & OVER!”
Steven Sadow, Trump’s lead defense lawyer in the case, said Willis’ filing “asks the court to turn a blind eye to her alleged personal and financial misconduct.”
Willis said her relationship with Wade did not give either prosecutor a personal or financial stake in the criminal case and said claims of a conflict of interest were based on “fantastical theories and rank speculation,” the filing said.