Legal analyst and attorney Harry Litman suggested on Friday that Fani Willis‘ prosecution of former President Donald Trump remained “tainted” despite special prosecutor Nathan Wade resigning from the case.
Willis, the district attorney for Georgia’s Fulton County, has been leading the investigation that brought a criminal indictment against Trump for his alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state. Trump faces charges of racketeering in the case, alongside numerous other co-defendants, which he pleaded not guilty to during his arraignment hearing.
Despite many experts concurring that the evidence in the case is damning against Trump, Willis and her office have found themselves embroiled in controversy over allegations brought by the legal team of co-defendant, Mike Roman, alleging that she maintained an improper romantic relationship with Wade. Wade, an outside attorney, was brought on by the district attorney to aid in the Trump investigation. Roman has also pleaded not guilty to all charges in the case.
Willis strongly denied any notion that her personal relationship with Wade had any bearing on the merits of the case against Trump. Nevertheless, following a hearing on the matter, Judge Scott McAfee ordered that, in order to address the situation, either Willis or Wade would have to step down. Wade departed the case on Friday shortly after the ruling came down.
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Writing in a Friday column for the Los Angeles Times, Litman, who previously served as a U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania and deputy assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice (DOJ), warned that “it would be a mistake to assume that Wade’s withdrawal puts an end to the ugliness and doubt surrounding Willis’ handling of the case” and that “prosecution revolving around an infamous Trump sound bite…is now tainted by an ‘odor of mendacity.'”
“But the order, and the circus-like atmosphere of the multiday evidentiary hearing that…
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