Scandal in Georgia threatens to muddy criminal case against Donald Trump

Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, grabbed headlines last year when she unleashed a sprawling 98-page indictment accusing Trump and 18 others of seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Now, Willis is back in the spotlight — but this time it is a less welcome one. Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign official and co-defendant in this case, has asked the judge overseeing it to disqualify Willis for what he described as an “improper, clandestine personal relationship” with one of the outside attorneys the DA’s office hired to help prosecute the case, Nathan Wade.

The allegations threaten to disrupt one of the most complex criminal cases against the former president, which could push a possible trial well past the November election date — with Trump most likely to be the Republican nominee.

“Certainly it’s hard to imagine there would not be delay”, which would have “very, very significant consequences”, said Clark Cunningham, law professor at Georgia State University.

The judge overseeing the case in Georgia has set a February 15 hearing on the matter, and Willis has until February 2 to file a written response. Should Roman win, it could result in Willis being disqualified from leading the case — or even a dismissal of the case altogether, a decision that Trump’s co-defendants would seize upon to make similar requests.

For Willis, the controversy has also cast a shadow over one of the most ambitious and complex cases of her career: trying to prove a former president and some of his closest associates engaged in a vast conspiracy to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election within the state, which was one of the most pivotal to Joe Biden’s victory.

The allegations first surfaced in the motion from Roman, who said Wade — who has been paid more than $650,000 by Willis’s office for his work on the case as of December, according to the filing — had used some of that money to pay for “vacations across…