An unflattering light was cast on prosecutors in former President Donald Trump’s Georgia election interference case Monday when an alleged sexual affair between Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade was revealed.
A Trump administration official being tried along with the former president filed a motion to have the charges against them dismissed, saying Willis improperly hired the prosecutor with whom she was romantically linked.
Trump allies are likely to seize on the allegation as proof of the illegitimacy of the case. One ethics expert interviewed by a Georgia newspaper said the claims, if true, indeed raised serious questions about whether Willis “was conflicted in the investigation and prosecution of this case.”
“That does not mean that her decisions were in fact improperly motivated,” said New York University law professor Stephen Gillers. “It does mean that the public and the state, as her client, could not have the confidence in the independent judgment that her position required her to exercise.”
Trump faces dozens of felony charges in cases set to be heard this year, an unprecedented development for a candidate and former president of the United States. Regardless of the outcome, the Trump camp seems determined to do everything possible to delegitimize the judicial proceedings, whatever the consequences for the American public’s faith in yet another important institution.