Former President Donald Trump’s arguments that his criminal charges should be dropped in Georgia and New York are set to take center stage in dual hearings on Thursday.
Trump will attend the hearing in Manhattan, according to his attorney Steven Sadow, but the one in Fulton County will take place concurrently, setting up a split screen of high-stakes court activity for the former president.
Georgia
Judge Scott McAfee will listen as one of Trump’s co-defendants makes the case that the Fulton County prosecution has been tainted beyond repair by a conflict of interest and that, if nothing else, District Attorney Fani Willis’s office should be disqualified from the case.
Willis alleged last year that Trump and 18 others participated in a racketeering scheme by illegally attempting to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.
The district attorney had been eyeing a late summer trial, but the case was rocked last month by co-defendant Mike Roman, who accused Willis in a bombshell court filing of carrying on an undisclosed romantic relationship with one of the three special prosecutors she hired to run the case.
Roman provided evidence that Willis, while paying prosecutor Nathan Wade an exorbitant amount in legal fees using public funds, was privately taking vacations with him. Roman accused Willis of financially benefiting from the relationship, arguing the predicament had irreversibly damaged the case. Trump and several other co-defendants have piled on with similar arguments.
Willis responded to the accusations by admitting that she had a “personal relationship” with Wade, but she argued it had no impact on the case and that anytime the pair had traveled together, they had split the costs.
Roman’s attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, indicated on Monday that she will attempt to call Wade, Willis, and other witnesses to testify during Thursday’s hearing. Merchant said one of her witnesses can provide evidence that Willis and Wade have since lied about when their relationship began and about whether they have ever cohabitated.
McAfee will, however, have the final say over who can testify, and he has already narrowed the scope of the hearing to exclude arguments about Wade’s job experience level. CNN reported on Wednesday that Merchant said she plans to call Wade to the witness stand first.
Asked to confirm that report, Merchant told the Washington Examiner she could not and that she actually did not know which witness she would bring to the stand first.
McAfee, for his part, has already said that disqualifying Willis from the case is a realistic possibility.
“Because I think it’s possible that the facts alleged by the defendant could result in disqualification, I think an evidentiary hearing must occur to establish the record on those core allegations,” McAfee said at Monday’s hearing.
McAfee said the hearing would be necessary to establish whether a relationship between Willis and Wade exists, whether it has been romantic in nature, when it formed, and if it will continue.
A prosecutor who appeared on behalf of Willis on Monday said Willis’s team plans to present a bulletproof argument that her relationship with Wade did not and does not present a conflict of interest violation.
New York
At the opposite end of the East Coast, Judge Juan Merchan will preside over a hearing in Manhattan, where Trump faces 34 counts of falsifying business records.
The case centers on hush money payments Trump allegedly made to silence porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016, and Trump has filed to dismiss the case on several grounds, including that the charges were brought by District Attorney Alvin Bragg more than six years after the fact. Trump, the leading GOP presidential contender, has argued that bringing the charges so late served the purpose of interfering with his campaign.
Critics have argued it is the weakest of the four criminal cases Trump is facing. They point to how the Department of Justice never pursued charges against Trump despite investigating and prosecuting Trump attorney Michael Cohen over the same matter.
Norm Eisen, a legal analyst who served as special counsel to House Democrats during Trump’s first impeachment, said he has supported Bragg’s position since he indicted Trump.
“I was a strong proponent of the case. … But the development of the case since then has removed those doubts,” Eisen said.
“We hope that as the case is reintroduced to the country and the world tomorrow, with a trial possibly being set, that the reflections we’ve shared and other information that’s out there will explain why those initial assessments are not right.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
He said that while the case is widely referred to as a “hush money prosecution,” he views it as a “very serious election interference” case because Daniels could have swung the election in 2016.
The trial is on pace to begin at the end of March, making it the first of Trump’s four criminal cases to occur. Merchan is expected to confirm a trial start date and other deadlines on Thursday while also hearing more on Trump’s motions to dismiss the case.
