A conservative government watchdog group has filed ethics complaints against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her former lover Nathan Wade based on their testimony regarding allegations of an improper relationship.
The complaints allege Wade lied under oath about his relationship with Willis in divorce proceedings, while Willis admitted to keeping campaign funds for personal use, including reimbursing Wade for travel, in violation of Georgia campaign finance law.
Specifically, the complaints argue Wade clearly knew he had a sexual relationship with Willis while still married, and lied about it in interrogatories, demonstrating a lack of understanding that renders him unfit to practice law.
The American Accountability Foundation (AAF) wrote, “To ensure that the citizens of Fulton County and the State of Georgia understand that the Bar will not countenance any violation of its ethics by those charged with upholding it, we urge you to revoke Ms. Willis’ license to practice law and permanently bar her from practicing law.”
Willis testified, “Cash is fungible. I’ve had cash for years in my house. So for me to tell you the source of where it comes from … when you go to Publix and you buy something and you get fifty dollars and you throw it in there. It’s been my whole life. When I took out a large amount of money during my first campaign, I kept some of the cash of that.”
AAF claimed that this was “the admission of a clear violation of Georgia Campaign Finance law.”
AAF referenced the section stating, “Nothing in this Code section shall permit or authorize a candidate to utilize campaign funds for the purpose of making gifts, loans, or investments directly to: (A) The candidate…”
“The statute is unambiguous – and the facts are not in dispute – as Ms. Willis described in her testimony, she placed the money that was intended for her campaign into a “fungible” slush fund with other moneys that she would use for various other purposes, including reimbursing her boyfriend for leisure travel,” wrote the complainants.
AAF added, “It is unreasonable to believe that a barred attorney running for public office would not have been aware that the strict reporting guidelines of Georgia campaign finance law existed to protect the public’s right to oversee elections and that she had an obligation to scrupulously abide by them.”
“First it is simply not credible that Mr. Wade did not know that he had sexual relations with Ms. Willis when he replied to the interrogatories above in his divorce case. Put simply, it is clear Mr. Wade knew that he had had sex with Ms. Willis, and he knew that at the time he was still married, and he simply lied in the interrogatories,” their filing continued.
AAF’s legal team wrote, “Whether he was married was not a complicated question. In fact, he was the plaintiff in a divorce case, a case that cannot proceed without the parties being married. As an officer of the court, this is simply unacceptable. It is challenging to think of a more clear-cut example of ‘dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.’”
For Willis, keeping cash from her campaign for non-campaign uses denied oversight of her finances.
The group is requesting the state bar open disciplinary proceedings and revoke their law licenses, saying violations of ethics rules by those upholding the law cannot be tolerated.