Embattled Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said that her election interference case against former President Donald Trump will continue and that her office hasn’t been delayed by proceedings regarding her relationship with her former top prosecutor.
“I don’t feel like we have been slowed down at all,” Ms. Willis told CNN in an interview Saturday, her first comments since a judge earlier this month ruled that she doesn’t need to be disqualified. “I think there are efforts to slow down the train, but the train is coming.”
In the case, President Trump and more than a dozen other co-defendants face charges in relation to alleged attempts to illegally overturn the 2020 election in Fulton County. The 45th president has pleaded not guilty, saying that he is being wrongfully prosecuted in a bid to harm his 2024 presidential chances.
Ms. Willis spoke just days after the same judge, Scott McAfee, allowed attorneys for the former president and other co-defendants to appeal his ruling for a review. The judge ordered that the district attorney either needs to step down from the case or fire her former special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, who later resigned and allowed her to remain.
Defense lawyers had alleged that Ms. Willis engaged in the relationship with Mr. Wade, which the two confirmed in a February court hearing, and financially benefitted from the arrangement. However, the two denied the latter allegations, although a number of questions still remain—namely, about the timing of their relationship.
In the CNN interview, Ms. Willis said that she is “not embarrassed by anything I’ve done,” adding, “I guess my greatest crime is that I had a relationship with a man, but that’s not something I find embarrassing in any way.” She also stressed she did not do “anything that’s illegal.”
Judge McAfee ruled there wasn’t enough evidence to back claims that Ms. Willis financially benefitted in the case but described her relationship as a “tremendous lapse in judgment.” And although some analysts have said that Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade perjured themselves during statements they made in court last month, the judge did not respond to those claims.
“However, an odor of mendacity remains,” the judge wrote, alluding to multiple allegations made against the two that were neither corroborated or disproven.
The pair also insisted they didn’t begin dating until after he became special prosecutor after 2022 and the relationship ended in the summer of 2023. They both said that Ms. Willis either paid for things herself or used cash to reimburse him for travel expenses.
However, a witness who used to be Ms. Willis’s landlord and friend testified that she saw them engaging in “hugging” and “kissing” as far back as 2019. Defense attorneys submitted an affidavit that analyzed Mr. Wade’s cellphone data showing that he had texted and called Ms. Willis thousands of times months before he was hired in November 2021, while it also alleged showed he visited the neighborhood where Ms. Willis had lived numerous times in the same time period.
Mr. Wade offered his resignation in a letter to Ms. Willis more than a week ago, saying he was doing so “in the interest of democracy, in dedication to the American public and to move this case forward as quickly as possible.”
Attorneys for President Trump and the other defendants said in court that Mr. Wade’s resignation was not enough to correct the appearance of impropriety the judge found. Defense lawyers say a failure to remove the district attorney could imperil any convictions and force a retrial if an appeals court later finds it was warranted.
“Whether District Attorney Willis and her Office are permitted to continue representing the State of Georgia in prosecuting the Defendants in this action is of the utmost importance to this case, and ensuring the appellate courts have the opportunity to weigh in on these matters pre-trial is paramount,” President Trump’s attorneys wrote in an appeal of Judge McAfee’s ruling last week.
Meanwhile, an attorney for one of President Trump’s co-defendants, Ashleigh Merchant, suggested in a recent Fox News interview she will reveal new leads and more details during the appeals process. She argued that Ms. Willis was unable “bring anything to actually back” up her claims about the relationship.
After Ms. Willis’s comments to CNN on Saturday, Anthony Michael Kreis, a Georgia State University law professor who’s been following the case, criticized her remarks in a post on X.
“If I were Fani Willis, I would simply not talk to the media at all at this point just out of an abundance of caution,” Mr. Kreis wrote.
The case is separate from the 2020 election interference case brought by special counsel Jack Smith in Washington’s federal court. That case is currently on hold while the U.S. Supreme Court weighs President Trump’s claims of presidential immunity, with oral arguments scheduled for next month.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
From The Epoch Times
