The district attorney of Georgia’s Fulton County, Fani Willis, could soon be required to testify under oath about her prosecution of President Trump — and about her secret romance with her handpicked special prosecutor, Nathan Wade.  

That is the upshot of another defeat suffered in court by the polarizing prosecutor after a Peach State judge denied her request to quash a subpoena issued by lawmakers in the state senate. Ms. Willis argues that her sprawling racketeering case against Mr. Trump and 18 others is protected from partisan probing.

This week a judge at Fulton County, Shukura Ingram, called Ms. Willis’s arguments for thwarting that subpoena “absurd.” The district attorney contends that the legislative turnover in January renders void any subpoena issued in the last senate session. Judge Ingram insists that “the reality is that there are myriad ways to tie these disputes up in court,” and that by Ms. Willis’s logic a “recipient can simply litigate” as a delaying tactic.

Judge Ingram ventures that Ms. Willis’s position “could and would result in lost evidence, fading memories, and general inefficiency and that “this Court cannot in good conscience facilitate such a result.” The judge also criticized as “deficient” Ms. Willis’s arguments for why her possible testimony is privileged. The judge orders the district attorney to flesh out those positions or “abandon her objection to these requests on the basis of attorney-client privilege.” The lawmakers contend that Ms. Willis misused funds to fuel her election interference case.   

Ms. Willis, though, faced a greater setback when the Georgia court of appeals disqualified her from her own case because of her affair with Mr. Wade. The court determined that this “is the rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings.”

The appellate tribunal homed in on “the appearance of impropriety that existed at times when DA Willis was exercising her broad pretrial discretion about who to prosecute and what charges to bring.” The court of appeals also determined that Ms. Willis’s deputies “have no authority to proceed” as long as she is disqualified. The review judges, though, declined to dismiss the charges, calling that an “extreme” remedy.

Ms. Willis has appealed her disqualification to the Georgia supreme court, which possesses the power of discretionary review, meaning that they are not obligated to take her petition. If they decline, her disqualification stands and, by statute, the executive director of an independent body, the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, is tasked with finding a replacement.

The best news that Ms. Willis has received in recent months is her resounding re-election victory in November’s election, where the embattled district attorney cruised to victory at ultramarine Fulton County with nearly 70 percent of the vote. Ms. Willis last month, on the night before Valentine’s Day, hosted an inauguration gala with the theme “For the Love of Justice.” The dress code was reportedly black, pink, and gold.

National Public Radio reports that Ms. Willis told her supporters, “In my first four years in office, I learned a really hard lesson. Folks are here for you during the good times, but the slightest bit of wind and folks quickly begin to fall to the wayside. See we are living in a time, not of a mild wind, but I submit to you, a tsunami.” 

Ms. Willis, who was seated at the same table as Mr. Wade during the gala — she told a judge last year that their romance was over  — added that “there are judges in my very state … in my very courthouse, that are more interested in their next appointment than upholding the rule of law.” 

Ms. Willis also referenced the “convicted felon in the White House,” an allusion to Mr. Trump, who over the summer was convicted by a Manhattan jury in a case brought by another local prosecutor — New York County’s district attorney, Alvin Bragg. Mr. Trump has appealed that verdict.

Fetes aside, Ms. Willis also has to contend with an open records request from a conservative legal group, Judicial Watch, which argues that Georgia law mandates that she disclose any communications she undertook with Special Counsel Jack Smith and the House January 6 committee. She has resisted those requests so assiduously that a judge found her in “default” of her obligations.