According to financial disclosures, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who is currently overseeing the Trump election interference case, made a contribution of $150 to county prosecutor Fani Willis in June 2020. This donation was made during his tenure at the Justice Department.
“The donation itself is more or less a token amount and was made prior to his becoming a judge,” legal analyst Philip Holloway told the Daily Caller. “But failure to disclose to the defendants a political donation to the prosecutor can be seen as a present appearance of a conflict of interest. Judges are required to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.”
Gov. Brian Kemp (R), who declined to initiate a criminal investigation into Willis, selected McAfee for the judicial position, and she was then sworn in on February 1, 2023. McAfee had previously served under Willis at the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office prior to her successful election in 2020, as per the report by the New York Times in August.
Willis, who replaced a former county prosecutor accused of corruption, took office on January 1, 2021. During her campaign in 2020, she emphasized her commitment to avoiding any sexual misconduct, which had been alleged against her predecessor. However, the irony of Willis’s promise became apparent when allegations of her own affair emerged, along with potential financial implications. In 2023, former President Donald Trump and his codefendant, Mike Roman, accused Willis of being involved in an inappropriate romantic relationship with her lead prosecutor in the Trump case, Nathan Wade.
During his testimony on Thursday, Wade stated that his relationship with Willis began in 2022, after she initiated the case against Trump in 2021. However, Robin Yeartie, a former employee of the Fulton County District Attorney’s office and a college friend of Willis, contradicted Wade and Willis by asserting that she knew about Willis and Wade’s relationship since 2019.
If McAfee determines that Willis indeed had a genuine conflict of interest due to her romantic involvement with her fellow prosecutor, she would be disqualified from the case. This would hand Trump a significant victory in the Georgia election interference case.
