DA overseeing Trump trial accused of improper relationship with prosecutor

South Carolina: One of the biggest criminal trials Donald Trump faces is at risk of being derailed over allegations that the district attorney overseeing it had an improper relationship with the prosecutor who led the investigation against the former president.

But Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis insisted on Friday that her relationship did not taint her election interference case against Trump, and that she had no plans to recuse herself, despite growing pressure to stand down or be sacked.

“This scam is totally discredited and over!” Trump posted in capital letters on his Truth Social account.

The Georgia election subversion case is one of four criminal trials Trump faces as he campaigns for re-election in November – and the only one for which he could not pardon himself if he becomes president.

It came to a head last year when an Atlanta-based grand jury indicted the former US president and 18 allies in connection with an alleged “criminal enterprise” designed to overturn the result to stop Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

However, one of Trump’s co-defendants in the case, Mike Roman, alleged last month that Willis appointed the special prosecutor who led the case, Nathan Wade, while romantically involved with him, and paid him more than $650,000 in fees for his role.

He sought to dismiss the charges against him and argued that Willis should be disqualified because her relationship with Wade was “an act to defraud the public of honest services.”

According to bank statements filed in Wade’s divorce case last month, Wade also paid for at least two airline trips with Willis while the investigation was under way, which his wife argued could only be explained by a “romantic relationship.”

As Trump intensified his campaign against Nikki Haley in South Carolina on Friday (local time) ahead of this month’s Republican primaries, Willis broke her silence by issuing a court filing that admitted a personal relationship with Wade while denying misconduct.

She called the claims against her “meritless” and “salacious” and said there was no financial or personal conflict of interest that constituted a legal basis for disqualification.

In an attached affidavit, Wade also insisted he and Willis were only friends before he was hired in 2021.

“In 2022, District Attorney Willis and I developed a personal relationship in addition to our professional association and friendship,” the prosecutor acknowledged.

Until now, Willis, a Democrat, had sought to avoid publicly responding to the allegations of a romantic relationship with Wade, who was a little-known prosecutor before he was appointed to take on the lead role for her case.

However, she used a speech honouring Reverend Martin Luther King Jr at a historic black church in Atlanta on January 14 to defend his qualifications, suggesting that questions around his hiring were rooted in racism.

The allegations have nonetheless threatened to derail the case and have given weight to Trump’s claims that he is the victim of a political witch hunt designed to stop him from returning to power.

The election subversion case is based on a 2½-year investigation, in which Trump and his allies were accused of a sweeping scheme that included setting up phony electors to produce fake votes, making false representations to the courts, tampering with electronic voting machines, and pressuring state and federal officials not to certify Biden’s win.

But it is only one of his many legal woes. He also faces another trial in Washington for election subversion, a trial in New York for alleged hush money payments, and a trial in Florida over his mishandling of classified documents.

Last week, Trump was also ordered to pay $US83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll, a New York writer he was found liable of sexually abusing and defaming. And in coming weeks, a Manhattan judge is expected to rule on a fraud case in which Trump stands to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties – and his right to business in New York.

Despite this, the former president is on track to win the Republican nomination against Haley, setting up a potential rematch with Joe Biden, who has his first primary race in South Carolina tomorrow.

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