By The hopes of liberals that they can stop Donald Trump through the courts appears to be diminishing by the day. After weeks of trying to hide it, Fani Willis admitted that she likely violated ethics rules in prosecuting the former president for attempting to overturn the Georgia election in 2020. The revelation may be a godsend for Republicans who have worried that a conviction would destroy any chances of beating Joe Biden this November.
The Washington Post noted that the prosecutor could no longer cover her tracks.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) admitted she had a personal relationship with an outside prosecutor she appointed to manage the election interference case against former president Donald Trump and his allies but denied claims that the relationship had tainted the proceedings.
In a 176-page court filing on Friday, Willis called the claims against her “meritless” and “salacious.” She asked a judge to reject motions from Trump and other co-defendants that seek to disqualify her and her office from the case and to do so without a hearing. Willis denied claims of misconduct and said there was no evidence that the relationship between her and special prosecutor Nathan Wade had prejudiced the case.
Willis’s response came more than three weeks after Mike Roman, one of Trump’s remaining 14 co-defendants in the criminal case and a former high-ranking campaign aide during the 2020 election, alleged in a court filing that Willis was engaged in a “personal, romantic relationship” with Wade, whose firm has been paid more than $653,000 by the district attorney’s office since he was tapped as an outside prosecutor on the case in November 2021.
Roman claimed Willis may have broken the law by hiring Wade and then allowing him to pay for “vacations across the world” with her that were unrelated to their work on the case. Wade and Willis, Roman’s filing claimed, were “profiting significantly from this prosecution at the expense of the taxpayers.” Roman’s filing, which offered no proof to back up the sensational claims, called for the prosecutors to be disqualified and for the charges against him to be dismissed.
Comparing herself to Martin Luther King, Jr. apparently didn’t do the trick. Last month, New Conservative Post reported that the improper relationship could cause Donald Trump to get a new trial in Georgia or at least an entirely new prosecutor.
On top of the sex scandal, Willis is also facing charges from a whistleblower that she misused federal funds.
The Washington Free Beacon revealed that “Fani Willis may have fired the employee who warned her about mishandling federal funds.”
Less than a year into her tenure as Fulton County district attorney, in 2021, Willis met with Amanda Timpson, an employee in the district attorney’s office responsible for giving nonviolent juvenile offenders “alternatives to the juvenile court system.” During their conversation, a recording of which was reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon, Timpson claimed to Willis that she had been demoted after attempting to stop a top Willis campaign aide from misusing federal grant money meant for a youth gang prevention initiative, the newspaper explained.
According to Timpson, the aide, Michael Cuffee, planned to use part of a $488,000 federal grant—earmarked for the creation of a Center of Youth Empowerment and Gang Prevention—to pay for “swag,” computers, and travel.
“He wanted to do things with grants that were impossible, and I kept telling him, like, ‘We can’t do that,'” Timpson told Willis in a Nov. 19, 2021, meeting. “He told everybody … ‘We’re going to get MacBooks, we’re going to get swag, we’re going to use it for travel.’ I said, ‘You cannot do that, it’s a very, very specific grant.'”
Less than two months later, Willis abruptly terminated Timpson and had her escorted out of her office by seven armed investigators, according to Timpson. When Timpson filed a whistleblower complaint the following year that alleged wrongful termination, Willis’s office issued a statement describing Timpson as a “holdover from the prior administration” who was terminated because of her “failure to meet the standards of the new administration.”
Earlier in the week, Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan issued a subpoena to Willis, demanding she explain the whistleblower report.
Willis’s office on Friday morning denied any federal funds were improperly spent, telling The Hill:
“These false allegations are included in baseless litigation filed by a holdover employee from the previous 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. Any examination of the records of our grant programs will find that they are highly effective and conducted in cooperation with the Department of Justice and in compliance with all Department of Justice requirements.”
You can tell that the revelations may hurt the case by how The New York Times and other media are reporting the admission from Willis.
“The allegations do not change the underlying facts of the case, which accuse Mr. Trump and his allies of engaging in a plot to subvert Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results. Four of the 19 original defendants have pleaded guilty, including some of Mr. Trump’s most zealous defenders. One of them, Jenna Ellis, said tearfully during a hearing late last year that she looked back on what she did ‘with deep remorse.'”
Well as long as she denies it, that's it then. Glad that's settled. Thank you CBS News PR. https://t.co/IEtz3fu8jB
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) February 2, 2024
On February 15, both Willis and her beau, Nathan Wade, will testify at a hearing involving motions to disqualify them from the election interference case.
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