Nathan Wade, a former special prosecutor, says he thinks Donald Trump will “absolutely” be put on trial in Georgia in the 2020 election subversion case. This is true even if he gets a second term and is in the White House at the time of the trial.
Wade quit the case in March after being accused of having an inappropriate relationship with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. However, he told CNN’s “The Source” that he is still close friends with Willis.
No case has ever been brought to court that asks if a living US president can be made to face state-level criminal charges. In the interview on Wednesday, Wade said that he thinks judges and defense lawyers will have to deal with a situation like this that has never happened before if Trump wins the 2024 election.
Wade said, “I do believe that he can” when asked if Trump could be put on trial in Georgia while he was still in office.
“I don’t think it’s true…” Everyone else thinks it looks good. “However, I don’t think there’s anything that could stop that from happening,” Wade said.
He also said, “If he wins the election, there will be lawyers out there who will have to figure that out and find a way to get around it.”
Wade’s interview comes at a time when the Georgia Court of Appeals has put on hold the case against Trump and his co-defendants for an election subversion plot until a group of judges decides whether Willis should be removed from the case. Because Trump wants to put off dealing with the law until at least 2025, he has been saying that her affair with Wade should also bar her.
The recent order by the court to put the case on hold is the latest sign that there won’t be a trial before the November election for president. The appeals court will likely decide on the disqualification problem by March 2025, but it could decide sooner.
Willis again asked the state appeals court on Wednesday to throw out the appeal of trial judge Scott McAfee’s original order because there was “not enough evidence.”
The filing from the district attorney’s office says, “With the case now docketed, the State of Georgia, by and through Atlanta Judicial Circuit District Attorney Fani T. Willis, moves for the appeal to be dismissed as improvidently granted due to the lack of sufficient evidence, based upon the explicit factual findings of the trial court, to support reversal of the order at issue.”
Steve Sadow, who is Trump’s main defense lawyer in Georgia, said that Willis’s request to throw out the appeal was a “last ditch effort.”
People said that Wade’s friendship with Willis was to blame for the delay in Trump’s trial, but Wade denied this on Wednesday.
“I don’t think what I did had anything to do with it,” he told CNN. “I agree with the charges.” I would never have done anything that could have put that work at risk. I do think that the time of my relationship was not good.
People who vote have nothing to do with this prosecution or their view on whether or not this indictment is proper. “The rule of law is at the heart of it,” he said.
Judge Scott McAfee of the trial court had said before that Willis could stay on the case if Wade quit, which caused Wade to quit.
The judge decided after hearing from witnesses and hearing proof for several days about defense lawyers’ claims that Wade and Willis were having an inappropriate relationship that was financially good for the district attorney.
In his decision, McAfee said, “Georgia law does not allow the finding of an actual conflict for simply making bad choices, even over and over again.”
In his ruling, the judge said that there was still an “odor of mendacity” about their relationship and that either Willis or Wade would have to leave the case.
Wade quit his job soon after the decision was made.
Source: CNN
