Donald Trump Turns the Screw on Fani Willis

Donald Trump has ramped up his criticism of Fani Willis after allegations emerged that the Fulton County District Attorney had a romantic relationship with a special prosecutor involved in the former president's Georgia election interference case.

Willis is leading the criminal racketeering case against Trump and 18 others, who are accused in a 41-count indictment of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all 13 charges against him.

On Monday, Willis was accused by Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign official who is a co-defendant in the case, of having an affair with special prosecutor Nathan Wade. Roman had a court motion filed on his behalf making the accusations, which are currently unsubstantiated, seeking to have his seven charges dismissed and Willis and her staff members disqualified from the case.

After the news broke, Trump, the GOP frontrunner, similarly called for all the charges in the Georgia case to be dropped in a series of posts on his social media platform, Truth Social.

Newsweek asked the Fulton County District Attorney's office by email to comment on the allegations and has also tried to contact Wade via his law firm's website for comment.

The former president wrote: "ALL CHARGES AGAINST ME, AND OTHERS, SHOULD BE IMMEDIATELY DROPPED, WITH APOLOGIES, AND MONETARY DAMAGES FOR THE ILLEGAL AND HIGHLY POLITICAL PERSECUTION OF INNOCENT PEOPLE."

The 127-page filing also claims, without evidence, that Wade took vacations with Willis using money he was paid for working on the Trump case, to locations including Napa Valley, California, Florida and the Caribbean and that they lived together. The motion further accuses Willis and Wade of "profiting significantly from this prosecution at the expense of the taxpayers." Wade was paid nearly $654,000 in legal fees for his work on the case, according to the filing.

It also claims Wade had two meetings with White House employees in 2022 and billed Fulton County for them.

In another post, Trump wrote: "Has everybody seen the revelation, just announced in the Great State of Georgia, that the Fulton County D.A., Fani Willis, who Criminally Indicted your Favorite President, ME(!), & many other Innocent People/Patriots, HIRED & EXORBITANTLY PAID a 'romantic partner' to prosecute the 45th President of the United States of America, & then 'financially benefited from their relationship.'

"In other words, he was paid a 'fortune,' & then took 'Beautiful' Fani on expensive, but all paid for by Georgia, vacations to faraway lands!"

In his latest post, Trump shared a link to an article about Wade's alleged White House meetings and wrote: "When is Fani going to drop the case, or should it be dropped for her? She is in more legal difficulty than any of the many people that she wrongfully indicted!"

When The Atlanta Journal-Constitution originally broke the story on Monday, the publication quoted a spokesperson for the district attorney's office as saying there will be a response to Roman's allegations "through appropriate court filings." Newsweek contacted Willis by social media for comment on this story.

Meanwhile, Trump has asked the judge in the Georgia case to throw it out, pleading presidential immunity for actions taken while he was in the White House. His lawyers are using the same argument to attempt to quash his federal election interference indictment, to which he has also pleaded not guilty.