Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis slammed former President Donald Trump's effort to bar her from prosecuting the Georgia election racketeering case, arguing his legal team came nowhere near to meeting the burden of proof, court records show.
After a lengthy and dramatic evidentiary hearing, Judge Scott McAfee is currently weighing whether Willis' personal relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade constituted misconduct. On Tuesday, Willis issued a new filing making it clear she was not impressed by the evidence presented.
"Application of the actual legal standards, reiterated by Georgia courts and by statute as set forth above, leads to only one authorized outcome," Willis wrote. "The indictment should not be dismissed, and the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office should not be disqualified."
In a footnote, Willis also took a jab at the attorneys who levied these accusations against her and Wade.
"The evidence presented does not even come close to establishing that the District Attorney’s statements 'were part of a calculated plan evincing a design to prejudice the defendant[s] in the minds of' potential jurors, the standard required for a finding of forensic misconduct," the filing states.
Willis backs her defense by noting the attorneys demanding her ouster are making an unprecedented ask.
"No prosecutor in Georgia has ever been disqualified from prosecuting any case on grounds of forensic misconduct, and this case should not be the first," the filing reads.
The filing comes as lawyers for former President Donald Trump and his co-defendants, particularly GOP operative Mike Roman, accuse Willis of misusing her office by funding vacations with Wade's salary.
Roman's attorney Ashleigh Merchant exposed the relationship in a court filing and later put out the itineraries that had Wade fronting the bill, including a trip to Aruba in November 2022.
For their part, during sworn testimony, both said Willis reimbursed Wad in cash.
The financial details behind their romantic sojourns spawned the hearings where all the attorneys in the sprawling election subversion case were called upon to quiz witnesses as to their knowledge of the affair.