Fani Willis Faces Double Whammy in Fight to Keep her Job

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is now facing a "special meeting" on March 7 related to two separate ethics complaints filed against her.

This comes as Willis battles allegations she had an affair with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor whom she hired to lead the interference case against former President Donald Trump.

Context

Willis has found herself at the center of a potential ethics violation related to her alleged affair with Wade. It 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.

The allegations Willis faces were first made when one of Trump's co-defendants in the case, Michael Roman, filed a motion three weeks ago claiming that Wade and Willis were at one point romantically involved during the investigation of Trump, adding that the special prosecutor and district attorney had been "profiting significantly from this prosecution at the expense of the taxpayers."

Willis and her office face widespread pushback related to the allegations as the 2020 election interference case continues. Trump and his co-defendants have argued that all charges should be dismissed, accusing Wade and Willis of misconduct.

What We Know

The Fulton County Board of Ethics will take up two other ethics complaints against Willis, which will be addressed during a "special meeting" on March 7.

Greg Mantell, founder of the Substack blog Investigative News Service, is said to be the source of one of the complaints that will be addressed in March, along with Steven Kramer's complaint.

This comes after, in a letter previously seen by Newsweek, Mantell wrote to the Fulton County Board of Ethics in January accusing Willis of several ethics violations concerning Roman's filing.

He said: "I wish to file a formal ethics complaint against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for several violation of the Ethics Code."

He added he requested Willis's expense reports in the years 2021, 2022 and 2023, all contracts and payments to Wade in 2021, 2022 and 2023, and records pertaining to $14.6 million in awards for the Department of Justice.

The meeting addressing the complaints will come after last week's hearing, which presided over whether Willis' alleged romantic relationship with Wade should result in her removal from the case, an argument pushed by Trump's legal team.

During the hearing, attorney Ashleigh Merchant—who represents Roman and has raised the concerns about the relationship—sought to prove that Willis and Wade benefitted financially from taxpayers' money, and that she should therefore be removed from the case.

Newsweek has reached out to the Fulton County Court via email for comment.

Views

Since the court order into the allegations against Willis, questions over whether she will be disqualified from the election interference case have intensified.

In Willis' response, which called the initial court order "a ticket to the circus," her office criticized Roman's lawyers for subpoenaing Willis, Wade and others on the prosecution team. These actions, it said, aimed to draw "more breathless media coverage and intrude even further into the personal lives of the prosecution team in an effort to embarrass and harass the district attorney personally."

Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani previously told Newsweek that the hearing has been "damaging for both Willis and Wade, personally and professionally," adding that Willis' handling of the allegations has been an "unmitigated disaster."

"Even though it shouldn't affect the legal merits of the case, the optics are bad. She should cut her losses, step down, and have someone else take over this prosecution," he said.

In addition, concerns over alleged funds between Willis and Wade have also been a focal point of the ethics complaints against Willis.

During the hearing Wade said that Willis reimbursed him for trips the pair took together using cash. When answering questions about the trips, he said that trip expenses were roughly even between the two and that any reimbursements Willis made were using cash. This means there were no credit card statements reflecting these finances.

Dave Aronberg, the state attorney in Florida's Palm Beach County, told Newsweek via X message last week that it is "hard to believe that Willis always reimbursed Wade in cash."

"A consensual relationship among peers is not normally a problem. But if you lie to a court about when the relationship started and whether reimbursements were made, that's game over. The question for Judge McAfee is whether they are lying. Simple as that," he said.

What's Next?

Judge Scott McAfee, who presided over the hearing, has yet to make a ruling if there is a legal conflict that justifies removing Willis' office from the case. Mantell's and Kramer's separate ethic complaints are expected to be heard in the special meeting on March 7.