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The three-year-long investigation of Donald J. Trump and his allies for election interference in Georgia faces a major hurdle on Thursday, when a judge begins to assess whether the lead prosecutor and her office should be disqualified from the case.
A hearing that begins about 9:30 a.m. will delve into a romantic relationship between the two main prosecutors — Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, and Nathan J. Wade, whom she hired to run the case. The defense argues that their relationship has created an untenable conflict of interest.
Here are the details:
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The revelations about the relationship between Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade surfaced in a legal filing last month from Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign official who is one of the defendants in the Georgia election case. Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade acknowledged the relationship in a February court filing.
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Lawyers for Mr. Roman and other defendants are seeking to disqualify the two prosecutors from the case. Their argument hinges on assertions of a financial conflict of interest: Mr. Wade has been paid more than $650,000 since he was hired in 2021, and during that time he has spent money on vacations with Ms. Willis. Defense lawyers argue that the money paid to Mr. Wade creates an incentive for Ms. Willis to prolong the case.
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Ms. Willis, who acknowledged the romantic relationship in a filing last week, said it began only after Mr. Wade was hired, and was irrelevant to the case or her ability to lead it. She said that the costs of the couple’s personal travel had been “divided roughly evenly” between her and Mr. Wade, so it represented no financial conflict.
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Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court, the presiding judge in the Trump case, was persuaded that there was sufficient reason to hold an evidentiary hearing delving into the relationship. “It’s clear that disqualification can occur if evidence is produced demonstrating an actual conflict or the appearance of one,” the judge said at a hearing on Monday afternoon.
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Ms. Willis, Mr. Wade and a number of others have been subpoenaed to testify at the hearing, including more than half a dozen prosecutors and others who work in the district attorney’s office, as well as Mr. Wade’s former divorce lawyer. Ms. Willis’s office has indicated that the prosecutors may call her father, who lives with her in Atlanta, as a witness. The evidentiary hearing is expected to last into Friday or longer.
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Mr. Trump and 18 other defendants were charged last August with racketeering and a variety of other charges in connection with a plot to subvert the presidential election results in a number of swing states. Four of the defendants have already pleaded guilty.