Donald Trump’s lawyers in his Georgia election subversion case requested Monday that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office be removed from the case, arguing that she led the “intentional injection of false allegations of racism” into court proceedings.
Much of the filing in the Georgia Court of Appeals focused on a speech Willis, who is Black, made at a church in January. In those remarks, Trump’s lawyers argued, she “deliberately chose to ‘play the race’ card, in a calculated effort to bring public condemnation against the accused and deflect public attention away from herself.”
During her church remarks, Willis criticized Trump’s legal team for saying she should be disqualified because she had an improper relationship with a prosecutor she hired. She noted that the prosecutor, Nathan Wade, was the only Black person she’d hired at that level.
“Isn’t it them who’s playing the race card when they only question one?” Willis said before the congregants. “Isn’t it them playing the race card when they constantly think I need someone from some other jurisdiction in some other state to tell me how to do a job I’ve been doing almost 30 years?”
Trump’s lawyers argued in their new filing that Willis’ remarks were made to “cast racial aspersions” and that she “obviously intended that every potential Fulton County juror who heard or read Willis’ racist speech should label the defendants as racists.”
Willis’ office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the claims made by Trump’s legal team.
Monday’s filing was made in the Georgia Court of Appeals, which halted Fulton County’s case against Trump in June while it weighs whether Willis should be removed from the case. Its first hearing is scheduled for December.
That development has stalled a case that, when it first began, was expected to wrap up before this year’s Election Day, in which Trump is competing as the GOP nominee for president.
The effort to remove her from the case took off in January, when Mike Roman, one of Trump’s co-defendants accused of trying to subvert Georgia’s 2020 election results, alleged that Willis was having an affair with Wade that caused a conflict of interest in her work. Willis admitted the following month to having a “personal relationship” with Wade but denied it having any impact on the proceedings.
Shortly after Roman filed his complaint, Trump’s legal team made very similar allegations as those in its filing Monday, claiming Willis “inappropriately injected race into the case and stoked racial animus” during her speech at the church.
The judge overseeing the case determined in March that there wasn’t enough evidence of Willis improperly benefitting from Wade’s hiring. However, the relationship created a “significant appearance of impropriety,” he said, and ordered either Willis or Wade to resign from the case. Wade stepped down that day.