Judge Targets Fani Willis for ‘Legally Improper’ Comments

While the judge in former President Donald Trump’s Georgia case allowed District Attorney Fani Willis to remain on the case, he criticized her for making a racially charged speech in mid-January in which she invoked the “race card.”

The Jan. 14 speech was given by Ms. Willis just days after allegations surfaced that she engaged in an improper relationship with her special counsel at an Atlanta church. Ms. Willis, who is black, appeared to suggest that court motions filed against her were based on a racial animus against her, while providing no evidence.

The comments, Judge Scott McAfee ruled Friday, was “legally improper,” and “providing this type of public comment creates dangerous waters for the District Attorney to wade further into.”

Attorneys for President Trump filed a motion accusing Ms. Willis of potentially injecting a bias into the case, which could influence the jury pool. They argued that she should be disqualified for her remarks, although Friday’s ruling allowed her to stay on the case.

Ms. Willis’ remarks were made in a general sense and did not specifically address any of the allegations against President Trump or the other co-defendants in the case, her office had argued. She also was not making any claims about the defendants in the case.

But Judge McAfee said it wasn’t clear whom she was referring to. The “effect of this speech was to cast racial aspersions at an indicted Defendant’s decision to file this pretrial motion,” the judge wrote in his order.

“In these public and televised comments, the District Attorney complained that a Fulton County Commissioner ‘and so many others’ questioned her decision to hire SADA Wade,” he wrote, referring to special counsel Nathan Wade. “When referring to her detractors throughout the speech, she frequently utilized the plural ’they.’ The State argues the speech was not aimed at any of the Defendants in this case. Maybe so. But maybe not. Therein lies the danger of public comment by a prosecuting attorney,” he added.

The judge ultimately wrote that she made no specific references to the allegations and the defendants still had the “opportunity for a fundamentally fair trial.”

“Although not improvised or inadvertent, it also did not address the merits of the indicted offenses in an effort to move the trial itself to the court of public opinion,” Judge McAfee wrote. “Nor did it disclose sensitive or confidential evidence yet to be revealed or admitted at trial.”

The judge did not appear to impose any penalties on the district attorney for her comments at the church.

What Was Claimed

In late January, Trump attorneys Steve Sadow and Jennifer Little filed a motion that accused her of making improper comments at the church.

“These assertions by the DA engender a great likelihood of substantial prejudice towards the defendants in the eyes of the public in general, and prospective jurors in Fulton County in particular,” they wrote. “Moreover, the DA’s self-serving comments came with the added, sought after, benefit of garnering racially based sympathy for her self-inflicted quagmire.”

In her speech at the church, Ms. Willis said that she had three outside lawyers working as special prosecutors in the election case—a white man, a white woman, and a black man. She noted that people have only questioned the qualifications of Mr. Wade, the black man.

President Trump’s lawyers wrote in their motion that her comments “constitute a glaring, flagrant, and calculated effort to foment racial bias into this case by publicly denouncing the defendants for somehow daring to question her decision to hire a Black man (without also mentioning that she is alleged to have had a workplace affair with the same man) to be a special prosecutor.”

“The DA’s provocative and inflammatory extrajudicial racial comments, made in a widely publicized speech at a historical Black church in Atlanta, and cloaked in repeated references to God, reinforce and amplify the ‘appearance of impropriety’ in her judgment and prosecutorial conduct,” the lawyers wrote.

Wade Must Step Down

Judge McAfee on Friday wrote that either Ms. Willis has to step down, or she must terminate Mr. Wade’s employment in the Trump case, saying he did not find that her relationship with Mr. Wade amounted to a conflict of interest that should force her off the most sprawling of the four criminal cases against the former president.

And, the judge ruled, Ms. Willis can stay on the case only if Mr. Wade withdraws due to “an appearance of impropriety” that impacted the prosecution team. The judge criticized Ms. Willis for a “tremendous” lapse of judgement and questioned the truthfulness of their testimony about the timing of their relationship.

“As the case moves forward, reasonable members of the public could easily be left to wonder whether the financial exchanges have continued resulting in some form of benefit to the District Attorney, or even whether the romantic relationship has resumed,” the judge wrote.

It’s not clear if Ms. Willis will step down or remove Mr. Wade.

“Put differently, an outsider could reasonably think that the District Attorney is not exercising her independent professional judgment totally free of any compromising influences. As long as Wade remains on the case, this unnecessary perception will persist,” he continued to say.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.