Trump Co-Defendant Seeks to Disqualify Georgia DA, Alleging ‘Improper’ Relationship With Prosecutor

Charisma Madarang
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Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign staffer and a co-defendant in the Georgia election interference case involving the former president, has accused Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) and a prosecutor in the case of engaging in an “improper” romantic relationship.

Roman — who is seeking to disqualify Willis and the DA’s office from further prosecuting the case, and for the charges against him to be dismissed — claimed Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade of potentially committing “an act to defraud the public of honest services” based on her “intentional failure” to disclose the alleged relationship that he claims she “personally benefitted from.”

In 2022 and 2023, Wade was paid approximately $654,000 in legal fees as he worked on the investigation, according to county records authorized by the district attorney’s office, reported The Hill.

Roman’s lawyer, Ashleigh Merchant, accused Willis and Wade of having “violated laws regulating the use of public monies, suffer from irreparable conflicts of interest, and have violated their oaths of office under the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct and should be disqualified from prosecuting this matter.”

Although Roman alleged that the pair traveled to together to “traditional vacation destinations,” as The Hill points out, the new filing did not include documentation of those alleged trips.

Wade is accused of having “personally and financially benefited from his personal relationship with Willis since he has received lucrative amounts under his continued contracts with Willis,” the motion states, via the outlet. “He will continue to be incentivized to prosecute this case based on his personal and financial motives, so he has acquired a unique and personal interest or stake in Mr. Roman’s continued prosecution.” The Trump co-defendant has yet to bring forward any hard evidence of the allegations.

In an email to the New York Times, Clark D. Cunningham, a law and ethics professor at Georgia State University, questioned why Roman’s filing did not include any proof of a relationship between Willis and Wade. “If Roman’s lawyer has actual evidence of an improper relationship between Willis and Wade, it was incumbent on her to make that part of her motion, such as by attaching sworn affidavits from witnesses with personal knowledge or authenticated documents,” he said after reviewing the filing.

Merchant told NYT that she reviewed documents showing that the two prosecutors had traveled to vacation destinations together and that Wade had paid for some of the tickets. Roman’s attorney also said that she had requested those records be unsealed in a separate court filing.

While it is unclear how the claims in the filing may impact the Georgia probe, some experts said that if true, serious questions could be raised.

Stephen Gillers, a professor emeritus at New York University Law School, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that if the allegations are true, Willis was not able to deliver the “independent professional judgment” required of her role but that “does not mean that her decisions were in fact improperly motivated. Gillers added, “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.”

In a separate statement, Ken White, a former federal prosecutor, wrote on Threads that the issue is “potentially catastrophic for the Fulton County case and will be a gigantic propaganda victory for Trump.”

Last August, as Trump’s allies scrambled for legal methods to shut down the investigation in Georgia, the ex-president baselessly accused Willis of having an “affair” with a “gang member” she was prosecuting. Trump has repeatedly attempted to discredit prosecutors investigating him, from social media posts by the former president attacking Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (including an image of Trump wielding a baseball bat next to an image of Bragg’s head) to lashing out against U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan hours after being issued a gag order in the federal 2020 election interference trial.

This article was updated on Jan. 9 at 2:04 a.m. E.T. to include statements to the New York Times, The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, and former federal prosecutor Ken White.

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