District Attorney Fani Willis’s prosecution of President Trump at Fulton County, Georgia, may have hit a significant roadblock following accusations that she hired her boyfriend as special counsel in the case and later paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars from taxpayers’ coffers. A legal filing from a co-defendant of Mr. Trump also claims the special prosecutor used that money to take Ms. Willis on multiple luxury vacations, including trips to the Caribbean and Norwegian and Royal Caribbean cruises. 

It will now be the presiding judge’s responsibility to decide whether to seek proof of these allegations and determine if the allegations could affect the future of Ms. Willis’s involvement in the case. 

The allegations of impropriety were levied by  a former Trump campaign official who is one of Mr. Trump’s 18 co-defendants in the Georgia election interference case, Michael Roman. In a 127-page legal filing that was released publicly late Monday, Mr. Roman’s attorney says that “sources” close to Ms. Willis and the special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, confirm that the two prosecutors “had an ongoing, personal relationship.”

“Mr. Roman … moves the Court for an order disqualifying the district attorney, her office, and the special prosecutor from further prosecuting the instant matter on the grounds that the district attorney and the special prosecutor have been engaged in an improper, clandestine personal relationship during the pendency of this case,” his attorney wrote in the legal filing. 

Mr. Roman’s lawyer says their relationship “has resulted in the special prosecutor, and, in turn, the district attorney, profiting significantly from this prosecution at the expense of the taxpayers.”

Mr. Wade, who is a private attorney hired by Ms. Willis to prosecute Mr. Trump and his co-defendants, has been paid more than $650,000 in taxpayer-funded legal fees for his work. Mr. Roman says these payments allowed Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade to go on expensive vacations.

Mr. Roman asks the court to investigate whether Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade “violated the law and their obligations under the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct when they engaged in a personal, romantic relationship that has ultimately yielded substantial income to the special prosecutor.”

Mr. Roman says Ms. Willis’s alleged violations constitute a serious breach of trust between herself and defendants, herself and her office, and herself and the taxpayers. His attorney says she failed to seek approval for the public funds that were dispersed to Mr. Wade and even failed to file his oath of office, which Mr. Roman describes as “a specific attempt to shield from public knowledge the fact that the special prosecutor had, in fact, been appointed without legal authority.”

The defendant says the proof of his allegations likely lies in Mr. Wade’s divorce papers, which have been sealed by a court at neighboring Cobb County. “The district attorney and special prosecutor have traveled personally together to such places as California’s exclusive Napa Valley, Florida, and the Caribbean, and the special prosecutor has purchased tickets for both of them to travel on both the Norwegian and Royal Caribbean cruise lines,” Mr. Roman states. “What work purpose could only be served by travel to this [sic] traditional vacation destinations?”

Mr. Wade’s divorce records, Mr. Roman’s attorney argues, should be unsealed in order to prove that Ms. Willis began a romantic relationship with him while he was married and before he was appointed as special counsel. Mr. Roman’s lawyer, Ashleigh Merchant, says in the filing that she has reviewed the records from Cobb County and is willing to share them under seal with the presiding judge, Scott McAfee. 

Mr. Roman is also asking Judge McAfee to throw out the indictments against him and his fellow co-defendants due to Ms. Willis’s lack of transparency and is also asking that she be removed as district attorney and Mr. Wade be removed from his law firm for violating Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct and the precedent of the Georgia Supreme Court. 

Ms. Merchant says in the legal filing that it is Ms. Willis who violated Georgia’s RICO law — the same being used to charge Messrs. Roman and Trump — by her intention to “defraud the public of honest services since the district attorney ‘personally benefited from an undisclosed conflict of interest.’”

Multiple press outlets have reported that Ms. Willis declined to comment on the allegations. The Sun has reached out to her office.