President Trump’s contention that the district attorney of Fulton County, Fani Willis, engaged in “appalling and unforgivable types of forensic misconduct” amounts to the most full-throated argument yet for the disqualification of the prosecutor from her own case.

That allegation, which appears in a reply to Ms. Willis  from Mr. Trump’s attorney, Steven Sadow, also accuses Ms. Willis of “deliberately stoking racial and religious prejudice against defense counsel and the defendants.” Mr. Sadow renews his contention that Ms. Willis lied about her relationship with Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade, accusing her of “testifying under oath untruthfully, and committing fraud upon the tribunal.”

Ms. Willis has argued that no prosecutor in Georgia has ever been disqualified from a case under the forensic misconduct standard. To that, though, Mr. Sadow responds that “no prosecutor in Georgia, elected or otherwise, has engaged in misconduct like Willis and Wade have here.” He adds that the “remedy must fit the misconduct.” That remedy, he contends, is “dismissal and disqualification.”     

Whether Judge Scott McAfee delivers that request could depend on his reading of Georgia’s State Bar Handbook, which governs the behavior of prosecutors and defense lawyers alike. That guide mandates that prosecutors “refrain from making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused.” It also notes that a “lawyer shall not knowingly make a false statement of material fact or law to a tribunal.” 

Mr. Sadow alleges that Ms. Willis has violated both of those dictates. First, he notes, she “wantonly” engaged in a “calculated plan to prejudice defense counsel and the defendants in the minds of potential Fulton County jurors” by alleging racial animus on the part of her defendants during a speech at Big Bethel A.M.E Church on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. 

In that speech, Ms. Willis accused her opponents of “playing the race card” and defended the qualifications of Mr. Wade as “impeccable.” She suggested that the reason his appointment has come under scrutiny is not because she was engaged in a romantic relationship with him, but instead because he is Black. Mr. Sadow accuses her of “playing the race and religion card.” 

The second allegation, that Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade lied under oath about when their relationship began, has been at the center of contentious hearings. A former law partner of Mr. Wade, Terrence Bradley, observed in a series of text messages to one of the defense lawyers moving for disqualification, Ashleigh Merchant, that he was “absolutely” sure that the former lovers are lying.

On the stand, though, Mr. Bradley refused to confirm that assessment, instead denigrating it as “speculation.” Now, though, one of the defendants moving for disqualification, David Shafer, suggests that a deputy district attorney at Cobb County, Cindi Lee Yeager, can corroborate those text messages even if Mr. Bradley has gone taciturn.

Mr. Shafer, in a “Notice of Proposed Testimony,” asserts that Ms. Yeager stands ready to share under oath that “Mr. Wade had definitively begun a romantic relationship with Ms. Willis during the time that Ms. Willis was running for District Attorney in 2019 through 2020,” or years before he was hired to prosecute the sprawling racketeering case against Mr. Trump and 18 others. 

Ms. Yeager, according to Mr. Shafer, overheard Ms. Willis tell Mr. Wade that “they are coming after us. You don’t need to talk to them about anything about us.” This suggests that not only might Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade have lied on the stand, but Mr. Bradley could also be in danger of possible perjury. 

At a hearing on Wednesday before a Georgia senate committee investigating Ms. Willis, Ms. Merchant testified that when Mr. Wade and his wife of 26 years, Joycelyn, were still married, the prosecutor “essentially just left her after meeting Ms. Willis and dropping the kids off at college.” 

Ms. Merchant added that “Ms. Wade had been a stay-at-home mom for—they’d been married for almost 30 years, and it was literally right after they dropped their youngest off at college” that Mr. Wade kicked her out from their home because of his affection for Ms. Willis. As Ms. Merchant put it, Mr. Wade told his wife to “move out.” 

Ms. Merchant’s theory is that Mr. Bradley’s antipathy toward Mr. Wade dates from this time, when Mr. Bradley was representing Mr. Wade in his divorce case and felt that his client was not behaving honorably. She also claimed that Mr. Wade got paid twice as much as his colleagues, and that there was “pretty much zero” accountability in his billing of more than $650,000 from the district attorney’s office.   

It will be up to Judge McAfee, who has promised an expeditious ruling, to decide whether he wants to accept Ms. Yeager’s testimony into evidence. Whether Ms. Willis stays on the case is likely to turn on whether an “appearance” of a conflict of interest is enough to disqualify — as mandated by the codes of Fulton County —  or whether the substance of one must be shown.