Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis speaks from a witness stand in front of Fulton Superior Judge Scott McAfee during a Feb. 15 hearing about whether Willis' office should be disqualified from the Georgia election interference case.
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Updated March 15, 2024 at 9:16 AM ET
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can continue helming the Georgia election interference case – if special prosecutor Nathan Wade resigns. The decision bolsters chances that 15 defendants including former President Donald Trump will face trial in Georgia for attempting to overturn the 2020 election result.
In a 23-page ruling that followed hours of dramatic courtroom testimony, Fulton Superior Judge Scott McAfee ruled that Willis' romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor she hired for the case, did not amount to a disqualifying conflict of interest under Georgia law.
The decision marks a major turning point in the multi-year-long quest to investigate efforts to undermine the 2020 election result in Georgia. Willis, the first Black woman elected district attorney in Fulton County, took office just days before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Though appeals are expected, prosecutors and the judge can now turn their focus back on moving the case toward trial. Four defendants have already pleaded guilty in the case, but a trial date is yet to be set for the remaining defendants, as Judge McAfee navigated an unwieldy array of more than a dozen defendants, their lawyers and the packed legal calendar of the former president.
Known for her sharp courtroom skills and affinity for deploying Georgia's racketeering law to prosecute complex webs of criminal activity, Willis guided the case through months of investigation by a special investigative panel to a grand jury, which handed up a sweeping indictment of 19 people last August.
But in January, one of the co-defendants, former Trump campaign official Michael Roman, accused Willis of misconduct that threatened to blow up, or at least derail, the case. Roman alleged that Willis was enriching herself off the case by taking fancy vacations with Wade, funded by his compensation for the case. Willis and Wade said she paid her own way on the trips.
But McAfee found that, "the evidence demonstrated that the financial gain flowing from her relationship with Wade was not a motivating factor on the part of the District Attorney to indict and prosecute."
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