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Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has admitted, in court, to being in a personal relationship with Nathan Wade, a prosecutor she hired to work on the Donald Trump case.
In the filing on Friday, she claimed that she did not get any financial benefit from the relationship, The Daily Caller reported.
“A co-defendant of former President Donald Trump alleged in a Jan. 8 motion that Willis improperly benefited from awarding Wade a lucrative contract when he took her on vacations using money he earned from his position, claiming this was grounds to disqualify Willis and dismiss the case. Willis responded in a 176-page filing Friday by arguing that their relationship does not represent a conflict of interest and never provided her with any financial benefit,” the report said.
“While the allegations raised in the various motions are salacious and garnered the media attention they were designed to obtain, none provide this Court with any basis upon which to order the relief they seek,” her office said to the court. It asked the court to dismiss the motion and not have the hearing, which is scheduled for February 15.
“Roman’s motion wildly speculates that District Attorney Willis somehow benefited financially from the investigation and prosecution of this criminal case, but provides no support to justify that conclusion,” her office said. “To be absolutely clear, the personal relationship between Special Prosecutor Wade and District Attorney Willis has never involved direct or indirect financial benefit to District Attorney Willis.”
Steve Sadow, an attorney for the former president, said that the only purpose for Willis’ filing was to get rid of the hearing.
“While the DA admits to an intimate relationship with her employee Special Asst. DA Wade, she fails to provide full transparency and necessary financial details,” he said. “Indeed, she says absolutely nothing about the so-called ‘coincidence’ of Wade filing for divorce the day after the DA hired him!”
But Willis has found herself in another scandal.
Audio has leaked of a former employee warning Willis of another employee misusing federal funds and, months after this encounter, the whistleblower was fired and escorted from her office by seven security members, The Washington Free Beacon reported.
It was less than a year after Willis became the Fulton County DA that she met with whistleblower Amanda Timpson who informed Willis that she was demoted after warning a top Willis campaign aide to not misuse federal grant money that was allocated for a youth gang prevention initiative.
Timpson claimed that the aide, Michael Cuffee, wanted to use part of the $488,000 grant from the federal government to get “swag” computers and travel.
“He wanted to do things with grants that were impossible, and I kept telling him, like, ‘We can’t do that,'” Timpson said when they met on Nov. 19, 2021. “He told everybody … ‘We’re going to get MacBooks, we’re going to get swag, we’re going to use it for travel.’ I said, ‘You cannot do that. It’s a very, very specific grant.'”
“I respect that is your assessment,” Willis said. “And I’m not saying that your assessment is wrong.”
But less than two months after that meeting, Timpson was terminated and escorted from her office by seven armed investigators.
When Timspon filed a wrongful termination lawsuit, the district attorney’s office said that she was fired because she was a “holdover” from the administration prior to Willis.
“This employee was a holdover from the prior administration. Management attempted to find a role she could fill, but was unsuccessful after transferring within the office three times. All of her supervisors found her performance to be inadequate. Her failure to meet the standards of the new administration led to her termination. We have not been served with the lawsuit and will not comment further except in court,” it said.
But Timspon, who spoke exclusively to the Washington Free Beacon, says there are similarities between her scandal and the other Willis’ scandal involving her alleged lover and employee Nathan Wade.
“My case and Nathan Wade’s case are very similar when you break them down point by point,” she said. “Ethical violations, abuse of power, and the misuse of county, state, and federal funds.”
The former employee said she wanted to warn Willis so that she would not be involved in a scandal.
“I wanted to make sure she knew because I didn’t want any scandal to be related to her. She immediately cut me off in the middle of my sentence and demoted me from the director of juvenile diversion to a file clerk,” she said to The Beacon.
After that, she was wary of Willis, so during their next meeting, she recorded the conversation.
