The bad blood between the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has thickened over the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, after Ms. Willis denounced Ms. Greene from the pulpit of a Black church and Ms. Greene fired back, accusing the prosecutor of playing the race card.

Ms. Willis on Sunday attended her first public event since the disclosure of allegations, filed in court by one of President Trump’s campaign staffers, that she hired her paramour for a key prosecuting role and paid him almost $700,000 of taxpayer money, some of which he lavished on her with luxury Caribbean and California vacations. 

Speaking to the congregation of one of Atlanta’s leading Black churches, the Big Bethel AME Church, Ms. Willis, an elected Democrat, defended her hiring of a suburban attorney with limited prosecutorial experience, Nathan Wade. She also condemned Ms. Greene, a Republican, who’s been vocal in her criticism of Ms. Willis.

“Dear God, I do not want to be like those that attack me,” Ms. Willis lamented. “I never want to be a Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has never met me, but has allowed her spirit to be filled with hate. How does this woman, who has the honor of being a leader in my state, how is it that she has not reached out to me? She could tell me, ‘I don’t agree with anything you are doing but I do not agree with people threatening your life and the life of your family.’”

Both Ms. Willis and Ms. Greene have recently been victims of “swatting” attacks in which anonymous pranksters called in false 911 reports in order to attract large law enforcement presences to the women’s Georgia homes. 

“How did such a woman come to think that it was normal and normalized that another woman was worthy of such cruelty?” Ms. Willis asked from the podium. “I would never wish for her to have the experiences of the threats that I have seen, the derogatory name calling, the being doxed multiple times.”

Just days before Ms. Willis’s sermon, Ms. Greene wrote to the state’s governor, Brian Kemp, and the state attorney general, Christopher Carr, asking that they initiate a criminal investigation of Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade, her alleged boyfriend. 

“Fani Willis may have received illegal kickbacks, including lavish domestic and international trips provided by Nathan Wade, from these misappropriated government funds,” Ms. Greene wrote to the two men. “This is part of Fani Willis’ unlawful partisan pattern, through her words and deeds, to illegally politicize and weaponize her public office to wage lawfare against President Trump for the purpose of interfering in the 2024 presidential election.”

“If Fani Willis took kickbacks — in the form of lavish trips — from her unqualified boyfriend she appointed with government funds, she violated her oath and many Georgia criminal statutes,” Ms. Greene continued. Mr. Kemp told Newsweek that he would not direct Mr. Carr to open a criminal investigation even though he finds the allegations against Ms. Willis “deeply troubling.”

In an interview with the Washington Examiner on Monday, Ms. Greene accused Ms. Willis of playing “the race card” to distract from allegations that she misused public funds. “We all know that Democrats, when they’re in trouble, they go running to the closest Black church and attack people and lie about people,” she said of the district attorney. “So, she’s definitely guilty.”

“You can play the race card all you want, and you can quote me on that, but I’ll tell you right now, I know the good people down in Fulton County, and they get fed up with people like her because their communities are constantly overwhelmed with gangs and drugs and all kinds of crime in downtown Atlanta,” she added.

Ms. Willis, during her church sermon, did not specifically address the allegations that she was having an affair with Mr. Wade, but simply said that she would not suffer the arrows of her critics. “You did not tell me as a woman of color, it would not matter what I did,” she said, speaking to God. “My motive, my talent, my ability, and my character would be constantly attacked,” she said.

The allegations that Ms. Willis paid Mr. Wade almost $700,000 for his work as a special prosecutor in the case against President Trump was levied by one of the former president’s co-defendants, Michael Roman. 

Messrs. Roman and Trump, along with 17 others, are being prosecuted by Ms. Willis and her office for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. Four of the 19 defendants have pleaded guilty. 

In a 127-page legal filing that was released publicly late Monday, Mr. Roman’s attorney says that “sources” close to Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade confirm that the two prosecutors “had an ongoing, personal relationship.” He said that proof can be found in the legal documents, currently sealed, pertaining to Mr. Wade’s ongoing divorce. 

“Mr. Roman … moves the Court for an order disqualifying the district attorney, her office, and the special prosecutor from further prosecuting the instant matter on the grounds that the district attorney and the special prosecutor have been engaged in an improper, clandestine personal relationship during the pendency of this case,” his attorney wrote in the legal filing. 

The Daily Caller is reporting that Ms. Willis paid Mr. Wade a much higher hourly rate than that of his fellow contracted attorneys. Mr. Wade, according to the records, was paid $250 per hour — totaling $700,000 over the course of his work — compared to the $150 per hour that other attorneys were paid. 

The presiding judge in Ms. Willis’s case, Scott McAfee, has said he expects to hold a hearing on Mr. Roman’s motion for dismissal in February.