Fani Willis Hearing Risks 'Blackmail Situation'—Attorney

If a hearing on misconduct allegations against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be allowed to go forward, it would set a dangerous precedent for "blackmailing" prosecutors in high-profile cases, an expert told Newsweek.

Willis, who's the lead prosecutor in the Georgia Donald Trump 2020 election-related case, was subpoenaed for a hearing over allegations that she engaged in an improper romantic relationship with the lead prosecutor in the case, Nathan Wade.

After four weeks of silence on the accusations, Willis and Wade admitted they had a romantic relationship on Friday but denied this represented a conflict of interest. The district attorney also denied she ever took financial advantage of hiring Wade on the case, and asked for Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee to cancel the evidentiary hearing.

McAfee is still to take this crucial decision. The judge asked attorney Ashleigh Merchant, who represents Trump's co-defendant Mike Roman and filed the original motion against Willis, to give him a reason to still hold the hearing. The attorney claimed she had evidence to disprove Willis' assertions.

But Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota and former White House ethics lawyer between 2005 and 2007, thinks that holding the hearing—with the likelihood of more salacious details on Willis' life being sought and dug out for the public—could set a dangerous precedent.

"Defense attorneys should not be permitted to go out and sort of find out 'the dirt' on prosecutors, things that have nothing to do with the case, and bring it in front of the judge to try to get a disqualification," Painter told Newsweek.

"If we go down that road, what's going to happen is that the defense attorneys will just hire a private investigator who's going to follow around prosecutors to try and find something they're doing that they shouldn't be doing but that has nothing to do with the case," he said. "And then threaten to bring in front of the judge with a disqualification motion to embarrass prosecutors and try to get their charges dismissed."

According to Painter, "it could almost become a blackmail extortion scenario."

In a recent article written with Norm Eisen, special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee majority during the impeachment proceedings and trial of Trump in 2019 to 2020, and Joyce Vance, a law professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, Painter agreed that Willis' action shows "poor judgment." But he also wrote that there is no basis to disqualify Willis and her office from prosecuting Roman or any other defendants in the election conspiracy case, including Trump.

While we should hold prosecutors accountable for any misconduct when relevant to their jobs, "we don't want defense attorneys to be able to ferret out this information and threaten to go in front of a judge with a motion to disqualify that could easily create a blackmail situation where real criminals would get their cases dismissed because the prosecutors would be scared of information being exposed to the public about them."

Painter thinks it's very important "not to have hearings that explore allegations against prosecutors that don't directly pertain to this case," as in Willis' case. "Or we could very well get into a blackmail situation. That would not be good," he added.