Left: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis; Right: Donald Trump (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson; AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Former President Donald Trump on Thursday accused Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis of stoking “racial animus” during a recent speech at a historically Black church on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
The six-page motion obtained by Law&Crime was filed in Fulton County Superior Court. The filing is stylized as a motion to dismiss the Georgia election interference and racketeering (RICO) case against him. Trump also aims to disqualify the district attorney, her entire office, and the special prosecutors hired to oversee the case.
Attorneys for the 45th president technically filed their request as a supplement to a recent motion filed by co-defendant Michael Roman, a staff member for Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, who argued earlier this month that Willis and lead prosecutor Nathan Wade should be tossed due to a “conflict of interest” because of an alleged affair.
Trump’s motion largely eschews rehashing the details of Roman’s earlier motion in favor of passing references to the “alleged affair” — in service of an argument that Willis used “racially charged” language during a lengthy speech at Big Bethel A.M.E. Church in Atlanta.
A lengthy footnote on the second page of the motion contains a transcript sampling some of Willis’ remarks.
“I’m a little confused,” the DA told parishioners. “I appointed three special counsel, as is my right to do. Paid them all the same hourly rate. They only attack one. I hired one white woman, a good personal friend and great lawyer. A superstar, I tell you, I hired one white man, brilliant, my friend and a great lawyer. And I hired one Black man. Another superstar a great friend and a great lawyer. Oh, Lord, they’re going to be mad when I call them out on this nonsense. First thing they say. Oh, she going to play the race card now? But no. God, isn’t it them who’s playing the race card when they only question one?”
The motion filed by attorneys Steven Sadow and Jennifer Little argues the district attorney’s pulpit remarks “constitute a glaring, flagrant, and calculated effort to foment racial bias” in the case.
The filing chides Willis for allegedly using race to distract from allegations of nepotism and self-dealing by “publicly denouncing the defendants for somehow daring to question her decision to hire a Black man (without also mentioning that she is alleged to have had a workplace affair with the same man) to be a special prosecutor.”
Trump argues that injecting racial bias into the case is no small issue because it could “engender a great likelihood of substantial prejudice” against the defendants in the eyes of prospective jurors.
Calling the comments “self-serving,” the filing says Willis’s pulpit remarks come with the “added, sought after, benefit of garnering racially based sympathy for her self-inflicted quagmire.”
Trump’s attorneys also accused Willis of violating the Peach State’s ethical rules for attorneys. The filing muses that Willis could, in theory, be disbarred for violating a specific rule that advises prosecutors against “making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused.”
The filing also cites a U.S. Supreme Court case discussing the responsibility that prosecutors, above all other parties in a case, have to the public.
“The awesome power to prosecute ought never to be manipulated for personal or political profit,” the motion reads. “In addition to the extensive misconduct alleged in Roman’s motion, the DA did just that in her speech by wrongfully inserting racial animus into this case to publicly denounce and rebuke the defendants, and to defend her personal and political reputation against the numerous and diverse allegations Roman made in his court filing.”
Law&Crime reached out to the district attorney for comment on Trump’s allegations but no response was immediately forthcoming.
The district attorney’s office has also disputed one aspect of the Roman allegations — in a somewhat sidelong fashion.
On the same day Roman filed his original motion, he also filed a motion to unseal divorce filings between Wade and his estranged wife. More or less simultaneously, Wade’s wife filed a subpoena to depose Willis in the divorce matter.
Willis, in a court filing, termed that subpoena “defective” and alleged Mrs. Wade’s effort to depose her was “conspicuously coordinated with pleadings in the election interference case.”
Earlier this week, the divorce filings were unsealed. The Willis deposition was stayed, pending the substance of Mr. Wade’s testimony in an upcoming family law evidentiary hearing.
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