ATLANTA — While Donald Trump has been busy trumpeting news of an alleged scandal in the Fulton County District Attorney’s office, his lawyer on Friday sounded a more cautious note.
“Suffice it to say that they are salacious and scandalous in nature,” Steve Sadow said, referring to claims that emerged in a court filing this week of an improper relationship between DA Fani Willis and a top aide.
But at a hearing Friday, Sadow said he needs to hear more before signing onto the explosive motion filed by Ashleigh Merchant, an attorney for one the 15 remaining defendants in Fulton County’s election subversion case.
Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor who is at the center of the controversy, sat quietly at the DA’s table with his arms crossed as he listened to Sadow. Willis didn’t attend the hearing, which marked the first time Fulton prosecutors appeared in public since the allegations emerged.
Fulton Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee said he plans to schedule a hearing in the weeks ahead to delve into the claims but would wait until after prosecutors respond in writing to the motion filed by Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign operative, before setting a hearing.
“As for the date of a hearing, we have to work around the other trial calendars in this docket,” said McAfee, adding that early to mid-February would likely be the soonest. “So I would imagine if there’s going to be a response it would be before that time.”
The exchange came at the tail end of a more than two-hour-long procedural hearing about more than a half-dozen pending pretrial motions in the case. But hanging over the proceedings were Merchant’s allegations.
On Monday, without offering concrete evidence, Merchant alleged that Willis improperly hired Wade, who was her romantic partner, as special prosecutor for the Trump case. Merchant claimed that Willis also financially benefited from her relationship with Wade when he paid for lavish vacations with her using the county funds his law firms received.
Roman is charged with seven felony counts in Fulton’s racketeering case.
Sadow said he wanted an opportunity to review Willis’ response before deciding whether to join Roman’s motion to dismiss the charges against him and for the Fulton DA’s office to be disqualified from further prosecution of the case.
“I’m leery of moving to adopt motions that make such allegations without having a better understanding or substantiation of the allegations,” said Sadow, noting that Roman’s motion marked the first in which allegations in fact were made about prosecutors.