Willis says conflict of interest claims led to ‘wild and reckless speculation’ and ‘extraordinary’ invasion of privacy
Despite allegations that prosecutor the Nathan Wade was overpaid for his work on the Georgia election subversion case, his pay was in line with his experience and the complexity of work he did, the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, writes in a court filing.
And, contrary to any assertions otherwise, any pay Wade made in the case did not personally benefit Willis, she said. They don’t share any joint accounts or expenses. When they’ve traveled together, they’ve split costs “roughly evenly”.
“Both are professionals with substantial income; neither is financially reliant on the other,” the filing says.
Willis also says Wade’s employment complied with applicable state and local laws and payments received the proper approvals.
The former Trump staffer Michael Roman’s filings alleging the personal relationship should disqualify Willis have engaged in “wild and reckless speculation” and attempts to subpoena a wide net of people connected to Willis and Wade for this purpose is an “extraordinary level of invasion of privacy”, Willis wrote.
She wants the motions to disqualify her from the case to be denied by the court “without further spectacle”.
Key events
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will travel to the Middle East from Sunday to Thursday to work for the release of hostages still held by Hamas and to secure a humanitarian pause, the state department said, according to Reuters.
The trip will include stops in Israel, the West Bank, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Qatar, it said.
Some legal experts say the affidavit from the special prosecutor Nathan Wade and filing from the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, where both say they did not share expenses and weren’t financially entangled, should go a long way toward staving off any removals from the case.
This should end the matter.👇
On efforts to remove Fulton County DA Fani Willis and Nathan Wade from prosecution of FPOTUS Trump.
(Note: I have been critical of Willis and Wade.)
Signed affidavit by Wade:
– No relationship before or when hired by DA.
– Shared costs equally. pic.twitter.com/A7yzPg6NXs— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) February 2, 2024
The chances of a successful disqualification went from 5% to .05%. —> Special Prosecutor Wade’s affidavit: the relationship with Fani Willis started after his appointment as special prosecutor, the two have never cohabitated, and travel expenses have been split between them. pic.twitter.com/ry3QbrzmLK
— Anthony Michael Kreis (@AnthonyMKreis) February 2, 2024
But, as the Guardian’s Sam Levine has reported, there’s still an issue of a perception of conflict. Trump and his allies are sure to continue this line of attack on Willis and use it to discredit the case overall, regardless of any dismissals.
Trump reacts to Willis’s confirmation of relationship
The former president Donald Trump, the main target of the Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis’s extensive election subversion case, has commented on Willis’s admission that she had a personal relationship with prosecutor Nathan Wade.
On social media platform Truth Social, Trump repeated the allegations that Willis’s hiring of Wade enriched her personally, a claim Willis has denied.
“By going after the most high level person, and the Republican Nominee, she was able to get her ‘lover’ much more money, almost a Million Dollars, than she would be able to get for the prosecution of any other person or individual. THAT MEANS THAT THIS SCAM IS TOTALLY DISCREDITED & OVER!”
In an affidavit included in Fani Willis’s court filing about the alleged conflict of interest motion, the prosecutor Nathan Wade detailed how he came on board to help with the Georgia election subversion investigation and his personal relationship with Willis.
Wade said the role of special prosecutor paid well below his typical hourly rate – $250 an hour, with a capped number of hours, compared to his normal $550 an hour for previous government legal work. He said he initially tried to help Willis find other lawyers willing to do the work, but many had “concerns related to violent rhetoric and potential safety issues for their families”.
None of the money he’s earned working the case has benefitted Willis, he wrote in the affidavit. They don’t share expenses and have never lived together.
“At times I have made and purchased travel for District Attorney Willis and myself from my personal funds. At other times District Attorney Willis has made and purchased travel for she and I from her personal funds,” he wrote.
Willis says conflict of interest claims led to ‘wild and reckless speculation’ and ‘extraordinary’ invasion of privacy
Despite allegations that prosecutor the Nathan Wade was overpaid for his work on the Georgia election subversion case, his pay was in line with his experience and the complexity of work he did, the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, writes in a court filing.
And, contrary to any assertions otherwise, any pay Wade made in the case did not personally benefit Willis, she said. They don’t share any joint accounts or expenses. When they’ve traveled together, they’ve split costs “roughly evenly”.
“Both are professionals with substantial income; neither is financially reliant on the other,” the filing says.
Willis also says Wade’s employment complied with applicable state and local laws and payments received the proper approvals.
The former Trump staffer Michael Roman’s filings alleging the personal relationship should disqualify Willis have engaged in “wild and reckless speculation” and attempts to subpoena a wide net of people connected to Willis and Wade for this purpose is an “extraordinary level of invasion of privacy”, Willis wrote.
She wants the motions to disqualify her from the case to be denied by the court “without further spectacle”.
Willis court filing points to relationships within legal teams of the defendants
We’re reading through the court filing from Fani Willis, the Georgia prosecutor, now. The full document posted today can be found online here.
Some interesting context:
In the filing, Willis points out two interpersonal relationships between defense attorneys working for those charged in the sprawling Trump election case.
The attorney for the defendant Ray Smith and the attorney for the defendant Kenneth Chesebro are “publicly known to be in a personal relationship”, the filing says. And the two counsels for Jenna Ellis are “married law partners”.
The state didn’t try to make these relationships a conflict-of-interest issue in the case because these kinds of relationships don’t constitute a legal conflict. Until Michael Roman filed a motion alleging the relationship between Willis and Wade was worthy of disqualification, “the private lives of the attorney participants in this trial was not a topic of discussion”, the filing says.
Fani Willis confirms relationship with prosecutor on 2020 Trump election case
Sam Levine
The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, and Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor working on the case against Donald Trump and 14 other defendants, confirmed for the first time on Friday that they had a romantic relationship, but denied any wrongdoing and Willis said she should not be disqualified from the case.
“In 2022, District Attorney Willis and I developed a personal relationship in addition to our professional association and friendship,” Wade wrote in an affidavit attached to a motion Willis filed in court on Friday. He was hired to work on the Trump case in 2021.
Willis wrote in a filing she had no personal or financial conflict of interest that “constitutes a legal basis for disqualification”. She urged Judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing the case, to dismiss a request to disqualify her without a hearing, which is scheduled for 15 February. She wrote:
While the allegations raised in the various motions are salacious and garnered the media attention they were designed to obtain, none provide this Court with any basis upon which to order the relief they seek.
Michael Roman, a seasoned Republican operative and one of the defendants in the wide ranging racketeering case against Trump and associates for trying to overturn the election, is seeking Willis’s disqualification. He alleges that Roman used money he earned from his work in Willis’s office on the case to pay for vacations for the two of them.
The Biden-Harris campaign has said the strong job figures released today should be a reminder to Americans what the economy looked liked under his predecessor.
Donald Trump “oversaw the worst jobs record since the Great Depression and his only economic ‘accomplishment’ was giving billionaires and corporations tax handouts at the expense of middle-class families”, the campaign’s rapid response director, Ammar Moussa, said in a statement.
The statement continues:
Now, [Trump is] rooting for the economy to crash because he thinks it’ll help him politically – but that’s exactly what will happen if he’s able to regain power. We know because that’s what happened last time.
Biden arrives at Dover air base to honor three US troops killed in Jordan attack
Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, have arrived at Dover air force base to honor the three US service members who were killed in a drone strike in northern Jordan.
The Bidens arrived at the base to witness the transfer of the remains of the troops killed in Sunday’s assault. They have been named by the Pentagon as Sgt William Jerome Rivers, 46, Specialist Kennedy Sanders, 24, and Specialist Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23.
Defense secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen CQ Brown, chair of the joint chiefs of staff, joined the president and first lady for the transfer in Dover.
President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden arrive at Dover Air Force Base for the dignified transfer of three U.S. service members who were killed in a drone attack in Jordan last week. pic.twitter.com/xdsSSDHX17
— The Recount (@therecount) February 2, 2024
All three of the troops who died were army reservists from 926th Engineer Brigade, based in the US state of Georgia: Rivers was from Carrollton, Sanders from Waycross and Moffett from Savannah.
The deaths marked the first time American military personnel have been killed by hostile fire in the Middle East since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on 7 October.
Only a quarter of Americans say they feel the economy is starting to recover from the problems of the past few years, according to a new poll released as new figures show the US job market added 353,000 new jobs in January, defying fears of a downturn.
The CNN poll released today shows 26% of Americans say they feel the economy is beginning to recover, up from 20% last summer and 17% in December 2022.
But nearly half, 48%, say they believe the US economy is still in a downturn, citing inflation and the cost of living, as well as expenses such as food and housing.
Overall, more than half, 55%, of Americans say they feel Joe Biden’s policies have worsened the country’s economic conditions. The poll found split views along partisan lines: of those who say the economy is recovering, nearly three-quarters say Biden policies have helped. Out of those who say things are getting worse, 83% blame the president’s policies.
Border bill text to be released over weekend, says lead negotiator
The lead Democratic negotiator, Senator Chris Murphy, has confirmed that the text of the long-awaited border security bill will be released this weekend and voted on next week.
Republicans said the border is a priority and we should craft a bipartisan bill to help control the border.
We did that. We have a deal.
This weekend we will release the bill and vote next week.
It’s decision time.
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) February 2, 2024
The Democratic congressman Dan Goldman has said he is “disgusted” by the news that the House judiciary committee has subpoenaed Fani Willis.
A statement from the New York congressman reads:
I am utterly disgusted but sadly not surprised by Chairman Jordan’s latest attempt to subvert our country’s rule of law by weaponizing Congress’s authority to interfere in an ongoing criminal prosecution for nakedly political purposes.
In his blatant attempt to save Donald Trump, his party’s indicted criminal defendant presidential nominee, from legal peril, Chairman Jordan has yet again abused the authority of the Judiciary Committee to attempt to undermine a state prosecution.
Make no mistake, this is the true ‘weaponization of the federal government,’ unlike Chairman Jordan’s Select Subcommittee of the same name in which he has wasted countless hours peddling baseless conspiracy theories to no avail.
George Chidi
The back and forth between Jim Jordan and Fani Willis began last year with correspondence Jordan sent on 24 August, the day Donald Trump stood for a mugshot at the Fulton county jail.
Jordan’s letter suggested Willis had subjected Trump to “politically motivated state investigations and prosecutions due to the policies they advanced as president”, and that any coordination her office had with federal prosecutors may have been an improperly partisan use of federal money.
Willis’s scorching response in subsequent replies said the inquiry offends principles of state sovereignty and the separation of powers, that it interferes with a criminal investigation, that Trump is not immune to prosecution simply because he is a candidate for public office and that Jordan himself was “ignorant of the US constitution”.
The Republican-led committee opened a formal investigation into the Fulton county prosecutor’s office in December.
Willis has been under fire over the last month after allegations of an improper relationship with the special prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom she hired to work on the Trump case in Fulton county.
Jordan sent a letter to Nathan Wade on 12 January, asking for his cooperation in his committee’s inquiry into “politically motivated investigations and prosecutions and the potential misuse of federal funds”. The letter notes Wade’s billings for meetings with the federal January 6 Committee, which the letter characterizes as partisan. The letter states:
There are open questions about whether federal funds were used by [Fulton county] to finance your prosecution.
Willis responded on Wade’s behalf twelve days later.
“Your letter is simply a restatement of demands that you have made in past correspondence for access to evidence in a pending Georgia criminal prosecution,” she said in the reply.
As I said previously, your requests implicate significant, well-recognized confidentiality interests related to an ongoing criminal matter. Your requests violate principles of separation of powers and federalism, as well as respect for the legal protections provided to attorney work product in ongoing litigation.
Fani Willis dismisses subpoena claims as ‘false’ and ‘baseless’
George Chidi
The US House judiciary committee subpoenaed Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, for records related to the use of federal grant money in prosecutions and the potential misuse of those funds.
The subpoena escalates conflict between Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican representative, judiciary committee chairman and an ardent defender of Donald Trump, and Willis, whose office charged the former president and 18 others with 41 counts for interfering with a Georgia election and illegally attempting to undo Biden’s victory in Georgia.
Willis responded to the subpoena on Friday:
These false allegations are included in baseless litigation filed by a holdover employee from the prior administration who was terminated for cause. The courts that have ruled found no merit in these claims. We expect the same result in any pending litigation.
She then went on to tout the office grant programs and said they are in compliance with Department of Justice requirements.