Trump seeks to disqualify Fani Willis from prosecuting him in Georgia

Donald Trump accused on Thursday the Fulton county district attorney of inflaming racial animus to distract from allegations relating to an an affair with one of her deputies, as he joined a motion seeking to disqualify her from prosecuting him for 2020 election interference in Georgia.

The filing, submitted to Fulton county superior judge Scott McAfee, adopted and added to an earlier motion to have the district attorney Fani Willis and her entire office thrown off bringing the case.

At issue is an explosive complaint from Trump’s co-defendant and former 2020 campaign election day operations chief Michael Roman, asking Willis to be relieved because her alleged relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade created a conflict of interest.

The filing itself included no concrete evidence that might give rise to a disqualification. But exhibits in related filings – notably Wade’s divorce proceeding – has shown that Wade paid for trips with Willis to California and Florida.

Willis has not formally responded to the complaint to date, though she addressed some of the claims in a speech delivered earlier this month at a historic Black church in Atlanta, suggesting the claims were in part racially motivated.

“How come, God, the same Black man I hired was acceptable when a Republican in another county hired him and paid him twice the rate?” Willis said in her remarks, in a thinly veiled effort to defend the hiring of Wade without specifically naming him.

In the new filing joining Roman’s motion, Trump’s lead lawyer Steve Sadow contended for the first time that Willis’s remarks, in addition to coming outside of proper court channels, were themselves improper.

“The DA’s provocative and inflammatory extrajudicial racial comments, made in