A hearing opened Thursday before a judge in the US state of Georgia, seized by Donald Trump who requests a dismissal of the charges against him locally, affirming that the prosecutor is guilty of professional misconduct linked to an intimate affair .
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The magistrate, Scott McAfee, will have to decide whether or not the relationship between prosecutor Fani Willis and the veteran investigator she recruited, Nathan Wade, amounted to a conflict of interest.
For Mr. Trump and his co-defendants, charged in this Southern state with unlawful actions aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 election, the case is clear: Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade maintained an “intimate personal relationship inappropriate”.
In their argument submitted to the court, they claim that the sum of $650,000 paid to Mr. Wade for his work allowed him to offer Ms. Willis a “luxurious vacation”, including a cruise in the Caribbean.
For her part, the prosecutor responsible for investigating the case admitted a romantic relationship with the lawyer she had hired, but denied any professional misconduct.
Mr. Trump’s request is therefore “unfounded”, estimated Fani Willis in a court document, ensuring that she had no intimate relationship with Nathan Wade when she recruited him in November 2021.
The latter declared in a court document that he began this relationship with Fani Willis in 2022, and claimed to have “derived no funds or personal financial gain from his role as special prosecutor”.
Donald Trump, favorite in the Republican primaries for the November presidential election, has pleaded not guilty in the Georgia case.
Judge McAfee has scheduled two days of court proceedings, during which Fani Willis and Nathan Wade may be called to testify.
Since the end of his mandate in 2021, several trials have targeted Donald Trump.
As part of another legal proceeding, relating to an alleged purchase of the silence of a pornographic film actress, he went to a New York court on Thursday, where the judge told him that he must appear in criminal trial from March 25, the first in history for a former president of the United States.
