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Willis asks appeals court to keep her on Trump RICO case despite ethics complaint

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mystery-ak:
Willis asks appeals court to keep her on Trump RICO case despite ethics complaint
By
Kaelan Deese
August 9, 2024 12:20 pm
.

Fulton Country District Attorney Fani Willis wants to move forward with her 2020 election interference case against former President Donald Trump while a Georgia appeals court grapples over whether she should be disqualified as the lead prosecutor.

The racketeering case has been on hold since May, when the Georgia Court of Appeals agreed to review Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee’s ruling over an alleged conflict of interest between Willis and a former top prosecutor on the case, Nathan Wade. Willis told the appellate court this week that McAfee’s order allowing her to remain should not be second-guessed and that the standard for disqualification posited by the defense is a tall bar to clear.

“Having failed to adequately support their chosen theories or persuade the trial court on their central point, the Appellants still received the boon of the withdrawal of a special prosecutor,” Willis’s team wrote in a 96-page brief Monday.

McAfee’s ruling pertained to a complaint over the romantic relationship between Willis and Wade, whom she had appointed to assist with the Trump case. A co-defendant of Trump alerted McAfee in January to an alleged “improper” relationship the pair had forged in March 2022. This March, McAfee stopped short of ordering Willis to step down from the case but said either she or Wade had to resign for the case to move forward.

Trump’s defense attorney claimed that the relationship led to improper financial gains for Wade and Willis, creating a conflict of interest that warranted disqualification of the district attorney’s office. Wade and Willis denied any wrongdoing in court, while both have offered conflicting responses about when their relationship ended. Willis has said the relationship ended sometime between June and August of 2023, and Wade believes it ended sometime between February and April last year.

Willis, an elected Democrat, has adamantly defended her conduct in public, including in a speech she gave on Martin Luther King Jr. weekend at Big Bethel AME Church.

more
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/3116489/willis-asks-court-keep-her-on-trump-rico-case/

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