More Trouble for Fani Willis, Disqualified for Secret Romance, as Justice Department Subpoenas Her Travel Records

The subpoenaing by the Department of Justice of records relating to the travel history of the district attorney of Georgia’s Fulton County, Fani Willis, underscores that she could be the next erstwhile tormentor of President Trump to face legal jeopardy.Ms. Willis was last month permanently barred from the felony racketeering case she brought against Mr. Trump and 18 others for interference in the 2020 presidential election. The state’s highest court denied her petition to reverse an appellate ruling that this is the “rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence.”That disqualification stemmed from Ms. Willis’s secret romance with her handpicked special prosecutor, Nathan Wade. The defendants in the case argued — ultimately, successfully — that the affair compromised their due process rights and could even have influenced her charging decisions. Mr. Wade was paid some $700,000 despite never having prosecuted a felony. The charges against Mr. Trump and his retinue, though, have outlasted Ms. Willis’s tenure atop the case, though they are likely hanging by a thread. The Georgia court of appeals reckoned that dismissing them would be “extreme,” and an independent body is now tasked with appointing a new prosecutor who will possess the discretion to decide what to do with the case. Ms. Willis won re-election last year to another term as district attorney, garnering some 70 percent of the vote in a district that includes much of downtown Atlanta, but she will have no say over the case against Mr. Trump.The DOJ, the Times reports, has issued subpoenas for Ms. Willis’s travel undertaken around the 2024 presidential election. The prosecutor’s travel was scrutinized before — albeit they were trips in 2022 and 2023 — during the disqualification proceedings before a state court judge, Scott McAfee. She testified that she and Mr. Wade took trips together to destinations like Napa Valley, Belize, and Aruba. Mr. Wade paid with a credit card, and Ms. Willis insists that she paid him back with cash kept at home.In sworn testimony during a court hearing last year, Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade both said their love affair had ended. But in August 2024, the couple was captured on a patrolman’s bodycam after they turned up on the side of a Georgia highway to assist Ms. Willis’s adult daughter, who’d been arrested and was pregnant. Then in March of 2025, they were caught on camera together at Los Angeles International Airport. It’s not clear if the subpoena for the travel records is interested in the pair’s perambulations.Ms. Willis has attracted attention from Washington before. Congressman Jim Jordan has threatened her with contempt for failing to comply with congressional subpoenas related to federal funding received by her office. Ms. Willis has contended that the request threatens to “expose legal theories and analysis, prosecutorial recommendations, and key evidence in an ongoing prosecution.” Mr. Jordan wrote to Ms. Willis: “Your indictment and prosecution implicate substantial federal interests, and the circumstances surrounding your actions raise serious concerns about whether they are politically motivated.” The prosecutor fired back that Mr. Jordan was working “to intrude upon and interfere with an active criminal case in Georgia is flagrantly at odds with the Constitution.”Ms. Willis has accused Mr. Trump of helming a “criminal enterprise” to secure Georgia’s 16 electoral presidential votes. A spokesman for Ms. Willis’s office, Jeff DiSantis, now says in a statement that “we have no comment beyond the fact we have no knowledge of any investigation.” After Ms. Willis’s disqualification Mr. Trump took to Truth Social to declare that Ms. Willis and others who pursued him “are now CRIMINALS who will hopefully pay serious consequences for their illegal actions.”While the contours of the investigation into Ms. Willis are not yet known, the “Weaponization Working Group” convened by Attorney General Pam Bondi could be involved. That body is now led by an ally of the president, Ed Martin, who is also involved in the probe into possible mortgage fraud committed by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James. News of the subpoena directed at Ms. Willis comes days after a former director of the FBI, James Comey, was indicted on two criminal counts. After those charges were brought in, Mr. Trump told reporters that more indictments of “corrupt radical left Democrats” were coming. He vowed: “There’ll be others.”Last week Mr. Trump said with respect of Ms. Willis that “she should be put in jail. She’s a criminal. Fani Willis is a criminal.” The probe that could lead to criminal charges is being led by the Interim United States attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, Theodore Hertzberg. Mr. Hertzberg was appointed by Ms. Bondi in May. He will serve until a permanent replacement is confirmed by the Senate.

More Trouble for Fani Willis, Disqualified for Secret Romance, as Justice Department Subpoenas Her Travel Records

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