Fani Willis’s Ex-Boyfriend Says Workplace Affairs Are as ‘American as Apple Pie’ — Could She Be Disqualified From Trump Case?

The declaration from District Attorney Fani Willis’s former boyfriend, Nathan Wade, that “workplace romances are as American as apple pie” reminds us that Ms. Willis’s grasp on her case against President Trump is not yet ironclad.Mr. Wade is weighing in at an inflection point in the case. The Georgia Court of Appeals will decide by next week whether to review Judge Scott McAfee’s decision to allow Ms. Willis to stay on the case after Mr. Wade’s resignation. Mr. Trump and his fellow defendants argue that their romantic entanglement amounted to a conflict of interest that harmed their due process rights. Judge McAfee did not go that far, though he discerned a “significant appearance of impropriety” and detected an “odor of mendacity” in how Ms. Willis handled the affair, which involved shared trips to locales like Napa Valley, Aruba, and Belize. Ms. Willis’s office paid Mr. Wade more than $650,000 despite him never having prosecuted a felony case. Mr. Wade defended his romance in an interview Monday on “Good Morning America,” explaining, “You don’t plan to develop feelings. You don’t plan to fall in love. You don’t plan to have some relationship in the workplace. You don’t set out to do that. Those things develop organically. They develop over time. And the minute we had that sobering moment, we just continued.”The Sun spoke to a lawyer, Harvey Silverglate, for one of Mr. Trump’s co-defendants, John Eastman. Mr. Silverglate reckons that “this case deserved wholly independent and sagacious judgments, not judgments clouded by romance.” He adds that it “has been wisely said that Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion, as the old proverb would put it. The same applies to the current situation.”Mr. Trump et al. argue that the romantic relationship began before Mr. Wade was hired and therefore compromises the entire prosecution. Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis maintain that they only began dating after she hired him for what the district attorney calls his “impeccable credentials,” an assertion conflicted by witnesses including Ms. Willis’s former friend and roommate, Robin Yeartie. Mr. Wade now concedes that the “relationship did not happen in ideal timing.”Mr. Wade could be considering his appellate audience when he declares that his “private life has nothing to do with the merits of that prosecution,” and that nothing “that occurred during the course of the relationship should cause question as it would relate to the sufficiency of the indictment.” Ms. Willis concurs, arguing that “there is simply no trial court error to be found in the decision” to deny Mr. Trump’s request to disqualify her.The 45th president, though, calls Judge McAfee’s decision to allow Ms. Willis to continue a “plain legal error” and urges the Court of Appeals to consider its obligation to “protect and maintain the public’s confidence in the integrity of the criminal justice system.” Those considerations, he reasons, require the district attorney’s disqualification from the case.Mr. Wade’s response was “not at all” when he was asked if he thought his affair with Ms. Willis has harmed her case, which alleges a plot by Mr. Trump and his camarilla to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. Already, though, the exposition of the disqualification issue has delayed the case for months. There is no trial date on the horizon, though Judge McAfee wants litigation to proceed even as Ms. Willis’s fate is considered by higher courts. Ms. Willis has struck a defiant note, telling CNN that while her relationship with Mr. Wade was scrutinized in open court “we were writing responsive briefs, we were still doing the case in a way that it needed to be done. I don’t feel like we’ve been slowed down at all. I do think there are efforts to slow down this train, but the train is coming.” The Georgia Court of Appeals, though, could halt or sideline that train, at least in respect of Ms. Willis. Mr. Trump’s appeal was filed on March 29. Under Georgia rules, the review body has 45 days, or until May 13, to decide whether to take up the issue of Ms. Willis’s suitability. If it does, it will likely have to decide whether Judge McAfee erred in determining that an actual conflict of interest, rather than an appearance of one, is required to disqualify.

Fani Willis’s Ex-Boyfriend Says Workplace Affairs Are as ‘American as Apple Pie’ — Could She Be Disqualified From Trump Case?

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