As former President Donald Trump’s legal team is attempting to make the case that he has presidential immunity from the charges he faces related to election interference in Georgia, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is making headlines of her own.
Allegations emerged late Monday that Willis was involved in a clandestine relationship with a special prosecutor she hired for the proceedings against the forty-fifth president.
On Tuesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Victor Davis Hanson, author of the forthcoming book The End of Everything, to discuss the potentially criminal claims and how they could affect the prosecution of Trump.
The Bombshell Filing
Michael Roman, one of Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia case who faces seven criminal charges, claimed in a bombshell public court filing on Monday that Willis engaged in an “improper” romantic relationship with attorney Nathan Wade that makes the indictment “fatally defective.”
Wade is a private attorney who has played a prominent role in the Trump election interference case as a special prosecutor. According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he’s been paid some $654,000 in legal fees since January 2022. As the DA, Willis authorizes his compensation.
The motion – which seeks to have Roman’s charges dismissed and Willis and her staff disqualified from the case – offers no hard evidence of the romantic ties between Willis and Wade. Instead, the 127-page document filed by Roman’s attorney Ashleigh Merchant says “sources close to both the special prosecutor and the district attorney have confirmed they had an ongoing, personal relationship during the pendency of the special prosecutor’s divorce proceedings.”
Merchant also noted she has reviewed the case file from Wade’s ongoing divorce proceedings at the Superior Court Clerk’s Office and made copies of certain documents. She alleges the case file has since been improperly sealed, which is why she is not sharing the information.
The filing went on to say that the district attorney “has benefitted substantially and directly, and continues to benefit, from this litigation because Wade is being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to prosecute this case on her behalf.” In turn, “Wade is taking Willis on, and paying for vacations across the world with money he is being paid by the Fulton County taxpayers and authorized solely by Willis,” the documents added.
The filing asserts both Willis and Wade “have violated laws regulating the use of public monies, suffer from irreparable conflicts of interest, and have violated their oaths of office under the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct.” As such, they “should be disqualified from prosecuting this matter.”
A spokesperson for Willis said the district attorney’s office will respond to the allegations “through appropriate court filings.” For his part, Trump said the DA is “totally compromised” and, therefore, “the case has to be dropped.”
Criminal Implications?
There is still a lot to learn about what actually happened between the two parties, but Megyn said it could spell the end of Willis’ crusade against Trump. “I am not sure that case itself is going to go away, but the prosecutor might be,” she explained. “If any of this is true, she’s in a ton of trouble and is obviously going to get booted off as a case and actually could be facing criminal charges herself.”
In Hanson’s view, these allegations have the potential to impact more than just the Georgia case against Trump. “I think in a wider context, all of the legal eagles that looked at these four indictments… had all come to the consensus that Fani Willis had the most likely chance of succeeding,” he explained. “If that falls, I think it will have a ripple effect because it will remind the public and I think the legal community that all of them were politically motivated and… ‘law-fare’ to get Donald Trump.”
Ultimately, Hanson believes this could all end up benefiting the former president in ways Democrats haven’t yet considered. “If this thing blows up and I think it has a good chance… it may happen that not only did this, I think, bogus politicalization of the legal system to go after Trump… help him in the primary,” he concluded, “but they’re going to help him even more than these people can dream up.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Hanson by tuning in to episode 698 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.