Fani Willis Helping Donald Trump by Staying on Case: Legal Analyst

Clark Cunningham, Chair of Law and Ethics at Georgia State University, said Saturday morning that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should take a temporary leave of absence and let a career prosecutor take over Georgia's election interference case against Donald Trump.

In an interview with CNN's Michael Smerconish, Cunningham said, if Willis stays on the case and has to continue fighting disqualification issues, she "runs the risk" of her case against Trump being delayed until after the 2024 election in November.

"Georgia could jump in this spring and do a Trump-only trial, which would be far more important than [Trump's civil trials] in New York," Cunningham told Smerconish.

Context:

Willis has found herself at the center of a potential ethics violation related to her alleged affair with special prosecutor Nathan Wade. This comes amid Willis' case against the former president, in which Trump and 18 co-defendants were indicted by a Georgia grand jury in August and face criminal racketeering charges for allegedly attempting to overturn the state's electoral results in the 2020 election won by Joe Biden.

However, four individuals who were indicted, but later pleaded guilty, said they'd cooperate with prosecutors. Trump, the frontrunner in the 2024 GOP presidential primary, and the remaining defendants have pleaded not guilty.

One of Trump's co-defendants, Michael Roman, filed a motion on January 8 alleging that Willis was having a "personal relationship" with Wade "during the pendency" of the investigation into Trump. Roman's motion alleges that Willis personally profited from the case against him, claiming Wade was paid in excess of $650,000 and that he used the earnings to pay for them to take vacations together.

Willis and Wade both said on Friday that they had a romantic relationship, which developed after he was hired to work on Trump's case. According to a motion filed in court, Wade confirmed that "in 2022, District Attorney Willis and I developed a personal relationship in addition to our professional association and friendship."

What We Know:

On Friday, the Georgia Senate created a special committee to investigate Willis. State Senator Colton Moore said this is "the first step towards impeaching and defunding this corrupt prosecutor."

Views:

Experts previously told Newsweek that the now-acknowledged allegations risk tainting the prosecution and will be used by Trump to his advantage.

"It's poisoned the jury pool to some extent already," Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota who served as the chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, said. "All the advantages have been to the defendants for this, including former President Trump."

Other legal analysts, including Painter,have said that while Willis used "poor judgement," her actions are not basis for disqualifying the district attorney from prosecuting Roman.

"Under Georgia law, however, even if all the factual allegations regarding Willis and Wade were true, there would be no basis for disqualifying them from prosecuting Roman or any of the other defendants in the election conspiracy case," legal analysts Norman Eisen, Joyce Vance and Painter wrote in a recent column published on Just Security, an online forum for the analysis of security, democracy, foreign policy and rights.

What's Next?

Willis was subpoenaed to testify at a February 15 hearing in which a judge will consider whether she and Wade should be disqualified from the state's election interference case.

In his interview with Smerconish on Saturday morning, Cunningham said Willis could "make it go away" by stepping down from the case.

"That's what she should do in the public interest," he said. "Her filing [Friday] raises a myriad of factual issues that will take a long time to resolve."

Update: 2/3/24, 11 a.m. ET: This story has been updated with additional information.