(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Fani Willis, the embattled Fulton County district attorney, has formally requested an appeals court not to remove her from the Georgia election case against former President Donald Trump and other co-defendants.
As reported by Daily Caller, Willis submitted a court filing on Monday following the presiding Judge Scott McAfee’s decision to oust her lover and special prosecutor Nathan Wade from the case after disturbing conflicts of interest allegations.
Willis told the appeals court that McAfee found “the evidence insufficient to establish any actual conflict of interest and declined to dismiss the indictment,” thus she argued she should remain on the case.
Willis’s plea follows McAfee’s ruling that she and Wade could not simultaneously lead the case related to alleged illegal efforts to question the presidential election results of Georgia in 2020. Following this ruling, Wade resigned from the case.
At the heart of the controversy lies Willis and Wade’s secret love affair, which involved luxurious vacation trips funded by Wade. These trips occurred while they were preparing the criminal case against Trump, creating what has been widely criticized as an evident conflict of interest.
Despite Wade’s abrupt departure from the case, Trump and other co-defendants demanded to an appeals court that Willis be also removed from the case or have it dismissed entirely. Trump’s defense attorneys say Willis hired Wade to enrich themselves from Fulton County contracts.
However, Willis has long maintained that her relationship with Wade began only after she hired him to prosecute the case. She also claimed, without providing evidence, that she reimbursed Wade for the extravagant vacation trips in cash and did not benefit from the Fulton County contract.
In the Monday filing, as reported by the Caller, Willis wrote, “Days of evidence and testimony failed to disclose anything like a calculated pre-trial plan designed to prejudice the defendants or secure their convictions.”
She added: “The applicants have not identified any public statement injecting the District Attorney’s personal belief as to the defendants’ guilt or appealing to the public weighing of evidence.”
Willis also defended her controversial comments made during a church service in January, where she suggested that her relationship with Wade was under scrutiny solely because of their race. Trump’s defense attorneys argued that these remarks might have prejudiced the jury against him and the co-defendants.
In response to the criticism, Willis argued that the church claims were “too vague, brief and limited in scope to imply any defendant harbored racial prejudice, particularly to the point of requiring disqualification.”
It isn’t immediately clear when the appeals court will decide whether Willis can remain on the case.
