How an office romance could derail the Trump election interference case

After spending nearly three years seeking to hold Donald Trump and his allies accountable for trying to overturn the 2020 election, Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis faces a series of imminent, critical choices that could upend her consequential case against the former president and 14 remaining co-defendants.

“The stakes could hardly be higher,” said Clark Cunningham, a law professor and ethics expert at Georgia State University.

Michael Roman, a seasoned Republican operative and one of the defendants in the wide-ranging racketeering case, filed a motion earlier this month seeking the disqualification of Willis and Nathan Wade, an outside lawyer hired by Willis in 2021 to assist with the Trump case. In court filings, Roman alleged Willis and Wade were in a romantic relationship and Wade had used some of the more than $650,000 he earned from his work for her to pay for vacations for the two of them. Bank records made public last week showed Wade had paid for tickets for himself and Willis to California in 2023 and Miami in 2022.

Neither Willis nor Wade has confirmed or denied a romantic relationship yet, and Willis has said she will respond in a court filing due 2 February. A hearing on the request is set for 15 February. Willis has said all of the special prosecutors she hired were paid the same rate.

While experts cautioned they were waiting for Willis and Wade to respond to Roman’s claims, it has already caused a headache for Willis, whose case has long been seen as one of the strongest efforts to hold Trump accountable for 2020. Because the case is in Georgia state court, it is also immune from Trump’s interference should he win the election.

“As a legal matter, I don’t see much of anything as of yet that would