Embattled Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis claimed that she is not worried after Judge Scott McAfee re-opened the disqualification case into Willis’ conduct, instead claiming that a “train is coming” for former President Donald Trump.
While speaking with CNN, Willis claimed that her record is clean and opted to once again throw her former lover, Nathan Wade, under the bus. “I don’t feel like my reputation needs to be reclaimed. Let’s say it for the record, I’m not embarrassed by anything I’ve done. You know, I guess my greatest crime is I had a relationship with a man, but that’s not something that I find embarrassing in any way. And I know that I have not done anything that’s illegal,” she said.
“No, my team’s been continuing to work it, and I think the media, and especially organizations like your own have been paying attention. All while that was going on, we were writing responsive briefs. We were still doing the case in the way that it needed to be done.”
“I don’t feel like we’ve been slowed down at all. I do think way that it needed to be done. I don’t feel like we’ve been slowed down at all. I do think that there are efforts to slow down this train, but the train is coming,” she added.
Despite the prosecutor’s claims, a number of legal analysts have all but written off the possibility of Willis’ massive, unprecedented RICO case against former President Trump and a number of his associates going to trial before election day. Another RICO case brought by Willis’ office against members of the YSL rap label has pressed on at an incredibly slow pace, with jury selection alone taking more than a year.
In addition to the short timeline, Willis is still under threat of disqualification due to perjury allegations and alleged misuse of county funds.
The case stems from Willis’ hiring of Nathan Wade as a special prosecutor to work on her RICO case against former President Trump. Willis did not disclose that she was having an affair with Wade — who was paid $700,000 for his work on the case and took several lavish trips with the district attorney — until it was exposed as part of Wade’s divorce proceedings.
While both Willis and Wade testified that the relationship began when he was hired to work on the case in 2022, a former office employee testified that it began as early as 2021.
Though McAfee did not disqualify Willis outright in his ruling earlier this month, he did acknowledge impropriety on the part of both Wade and Willis. Wade was forced to resign in order for Willis to remain on the case, though the embattled district attorney is far from in the clear, as McAfee has re-opened the case for evidence.
Defense attorneys for former Georgia Republican Party chairman David Shafer are expected to call on Cobb County Chief Deputy District Attorney Cindi Lee Yeager, who has offered to testify about her knowledge of the relationship between Willis and Nathan Wade.
Yeager told defense attorneys that she had multiple meetings with Terrence Bradley, Wade’s former law partner, between August 2023 and January 2024. Bradley told Yeager that Wade and Willis first met in 2019, adding that the romantic relationship between the two began around that time. She is also expected to detail a panicked phone call between Willis and Bradley in which the Fulton County district attorney told Bradley that “they are coming after us” and ordered him to keep quiet.
