Ashleigh Merchant, defense attorney who sought to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from prosecuting a racketeering case against former President President Donald Trump and 14 others, including her client Michael Roman, will testify before a state committee about Ms. Willis on March 6.
On Jan. 8, Ms. Merchant filed a motion to disqualify Ms. Willis, alleging she had an “improper” relationship with the special prosecutor she appointed to lead the high-profile case and financially benefited from the situation.
The motion had a wide-ranging ripple effect—including the creation of a committee in the Georgia Senate to investigate Ms. Willis.
This committee, chaired by state senator Bill Cowsert, held its first meeting last month.
The committee was created only to investigate, given the power to compel testimony and subpoena evidence.
Mr. Cowsert said it was their goal to “investigate these troubling allegations, determine what the facts are, and shine light on these facts.”
“There are whistleblowers inside the Fulton County District Attorney’s office that are raising complaints and allegations about the misuse of both federal funds and state funds,” he said. “You just lose the confidence of the public in the fairness of the criminal justice system if they think prosecutors are engaging in prosecution so their lovers can get rich and they can share in the benefits of that.”
“I’m not comfortable with that scenario, with that perception by the public, but I’m not just going to accept these as true on their face,” Mr. Cowsert said. “We’re going to independently verify.”
He stressed that the investigation was not political; the committee is bipartisan and the Senate had nothing to do with Ms. Willis’s years-long investigation into the election case until local reports about improper behavior caused a stir, he explained.
“The people of Georgia are very troubled by these allegations. It’s important that we have the public’s confidence in the fairness and impartiality of the criminal justice system. And that’s been shaken,” he said.
What Testimony Has Already Revealed
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee has already heard three days of witness testimony plus closing arguments, and is set to issue a decision on whether the district attorney is disqualified from prosecuting the case within two weeks.Ms. Willis has testified herself, as has Nathan Wade, whom she appointed special prosecutor.
Ms. Merchant had alleged in a court filing that Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade were in a relationship prior to his hiring on Nov. 1, 2021, and that he was paid more than $650,000 for his contractor work and spent thousands on “lavish” vacations with Ms. Willis.
Mr. Wade was in the process of divorce the the past few years, and records filed in his divorce shortly after Ms. Merchant’s motion corroborated trips Mr. Wade purchased in his and Ms. Willis’s name totaling in the thousands for travel and hotels.
Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade do not deny a relationship; in sworn testimonies, both of them said they met late 2019 at a judicial conference and exchanged contact information, and became good friends later, communicating often in 2020 and 2021 before beginning a romantic relationship early 2022, which ended the summer of 2023.
They deny any wrongdoing, however, with both of them testifying that Ms. Willis had paid her half of expenses, either because they took turns paying for each other or through large cash reimbursements she gave to Mr. Wade. Neither had any record of the cash reimbursements, which both said was actually a point of contention in their relationship with Ms. Willis always insisting on paying her half.
During court hearings, Ms. Merchant revealed that some of the information she obtained to make the allegations in her motion to dismiss came from Terrence Bradley, a former law partner of Mr. Wade’s who also represented Mr. Wade during part of his divorce. Ms. Merchant had read aloud several texts in court that suggested Mr. Bradley confirmed much of the information she used, but was not the sole source. She did not make a full record of where she obtained the information used in the allegations during the hearing, and will likely be questioned about her knowledge before the state committee.
