Three prominent ethics lawyers—Norman L. Eisen. Joyce Vance, and Richard Painter— express their shared view of the legal challenge to Fani Willis and her Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade. I have excerpted only the opening paragraphs from the website “Just security.” Please open the link to finish the article. The authors’ bios appear at the end of the excerpt.

They begin:

No one is praising Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s apparent romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, an attorney in private practice who she brought on board as a Special Prosecutor in the criminal investigation and now prosecution of Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants. We have not yet heard that much of Willis’s side of the story. However, based on what is known so far, it represents poor judgment—especially in a case of this magnitude, even if a prosecutor’s private life is generally none of the public’s business. Willis has already said publicly that she is “flawed” and “imperfect” in her public remarks at Bethel AME Church following the allegations. But whether there were personal failings is not the operative legal test for whether Willis or Wade should be disqualified from the case, and accordingly that question is not the focus of this essay. Prosecutors are human, and they can and do make mistakes. The question here is whether Willis’s and Wade’s apparent mistakes have any bearing on the election conspiracy prosecution in a way the law would require their removal from the case.

The motion filed by defendant Michael Roman seeks primarily to do just that – to disqualify Willis and Wade from further participation in this case. Under Georgia law, however, even if all the factual allegations regarding Willis and Wade were true, there would be no basis for disqualifying them from prosecuting Roman or any of the other defendants in the election conspiracy case.

The key point is that regardless of whether the factual circumstances involving Willis and Wade give rise to separate ethical concerns with respect to his hiring, such questions do not affect the propriety of the prosecution against Roman and his co-defendants. Questions about gifts and related matters go to Willis’s and Wade’s obligations to the Fulton County District Attorney’s office, and have no connection to assuring the defendants a fair trial. These allegations are as irrelevant to the trial as allegations in other situations that prosecutors took office supplies for personal use, drove county vehicles for personal errands, or plagiarized portions of their student law review notes. All of those are legitimate issues—for prosecutors’ offices and those with oversight responsibilities to address—but such allegations do not bring criminal prosecutions to a stop or require that cases be transferred to a different office. Defense attorneys cannot use allegations of prosecutorial ethics violations, real or imaginary, that have nothing to do with a trial to delay or force prosecutors off of a case….

The authors:

Norman L. Eisen:

Ambassador Norman Eisen (ret.) (@NormEisen) served in the White House as special counsel and special assistant to the president for ethics and government reform and as ambassador to the Czech Republic under President Barack Obama, as well as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee from 2019–20, including for the first impeachment and trial of President Donald Trump.

Joyce Vance

Joyce White Vance (@JoyceWhiteVance) is Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law and former United States Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017. Member of the Editorial Board of Just Security.

Richard Painter

Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA). is the S. Walter Richey Professor of Corporate Law at the University of Minnesota Law School and was the chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush.