Codefendants are seeking an evidentiary hearing.
As Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis moved to cancel a hearing that would further spotlight allegations of misconduct in the high profile election case she is prosecuting against former President Donald Trump and 15 codefendants, several of those codefendants are arguing that an evidentiary hearing needs to be held.
David Shafer, former chair of the Republican Party in Georgia and one of the alternate electors who cast a ballot for President Trump in 2020, filed a lengthy motion to disqualify Ms. Willis on Feb. 5.
He argued that Ms. Willis “has engaged in a pattern of prosecutorial, forensic misconduct” that warrants the disqualification of her and her entire team, citing dozens of news articles and quoting Ms. Willis’s interviews extensively.
“All of the causes for the disqualification are self-inflicted blows,” the motion reads. He alleged that Ms. Willis’s public statements about the case have strayed “wildly” from what is proper, pointing to multiple interviews in which she referred to some of the codefendants as “fake electors.”
Mr. Shafer’s argument is similar to one filed by attorneys for President Trump, who argue that Ms. Willis has made extrajudicial statements to inject “racial animus“ and prejudice into the case in a manner unbefitting a public prosecutor. Both motions highlight a speech Ms. Willis gave at the Big Bethel AME Church in Atlanta on Jan. 14, where she repeatedly invoked God while implying her critics were racially motivated.
Mr. Shafer’s motion also references allegations made by codefendant Michael Roman in a Jan. 8 court filing, which first drew attention to the romantic relationship between Ms. Willis and Nathan Wade, an attorney she appointed special prosecutor to take a lead role in the election case.
Mr. Shafer’s attorneys have taken issue with the way Ms. Willis chose to respond to those allegations, by making “the most offensive and incendiary allegations against her accusers” and to “infect” and “taint” the jury pool and allege that anyone questioning her relationship must be doing so “for racist purposes.”
As such, Mr. Shafer cannot get a fair trial in Fulton County, his attorneys argue. They requested a change of venue in a separate motion. According to The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Mr. Shafer is hoping to transfer his case to Burke County or Peach County, both of which voted for President Trump over President Joe Biden in 2020. In Fulton County, more than 70 percent of voters had voted for President Biden.
