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Fani Willis, the Democratic Georgia prosecutor who indicted former President Donald Trump on election-interference-related charges, can remain on the case if she dismisses the deputy with whom she had a romantic relationship, a judge said on Friday.
The now-ended romantic relationship with her chief legal adviser Nathan Wade—whom her office paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for legal services since 2021—created an “appearance of impropriety,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee said in a filing.
It marked a partial win for defense lawyers who raised conflict-of-interest concerns, but stopped short of giving them the outright victory they had hoped for: getting Willis, and the case itself, dismissed.
A Willis spokesman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The romantic relationship between Willis and Wade became public in January when Ashleigh Merchant, a lawyer for Trump co-defendant Michael Roman, filed a motion seeking disqualification of Willis on grounds she and Wade benefited financially from his contract to work on the case.
The filing alleged the pair took cruises and other vacations together, something Willis and Wade later confirmed but said didn’t amount to a conflict because they generally divided the costs roughly evenly. Roman alleged their relationship could have influenced prosecutorial decisions.
“[T]he established record now highlights a significant appearance of impropriety that infects the current structure of the prosecution team,” McAfee wrote.
McAfee concluded the defense didn’t present sufficient evidence that Willis has benefited financially from the case and her relationship with Wade. But, he wrote: “This finding is by no means an indication that the Court condones this tremendous lapse in judgment.”
Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead counsel in the Georgia case, said Friday his legal team would use all legal options available to get the case dismissed.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Roman would seek to appeal McAfee’s decision.
Lawyers including those for Trump and former Georgia Republican Party Chair David Shafer later joined the motion to dismiss the case and disqualify Willis.
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