'Profound disappointment': Fani Wills’ primary challenger warned her not to hire Nathan Wade

21 December 2024

Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis was recently removed as prosecutor in President-elect Donald Trump's election interference case. The man who ran against her in the Democratic primary is now saying she could have avoided that result had she heeded his advice.

In an op-ed for MSNBC, Christian Wise Smith – a former assistant district attorney for Fulton County — argued that Willis' dismissal as lead prosecutor was her own fault. He wrote that her decision to hire Nathan Wade as special prosecutor may have doomed not just her prosecution of the case, but the case itself. He described the Georgia Court of Appeals' disqualification of Willis as both a "legal setback" and "a profound disappointment for our justice system and the citizens of Fulton County."

"I understand the immense responsibility that comes with wielding prosecutorial power," Smith wrote. "Public trust isn’t just earned through the cases we choose to pursue, but it’s also earned in the way we conduct ourselves and manage our offices."

Smith recalled a conversation he had with Willis about Wade — whom she briefly dated — in which he confided to her that hiring him was a "waste of resources" given his seven-figure pay package for his work on the case. He also reportedly told her that he knew of multiple qualified attorneys who were just as able to do the work that had been assigned to Wade.

"When you pay one attorney $1 million to handle a case, it hurts everyone else in Fulton County,” Smith recalled telling Willis. He added that it was important to prosecute Trump and his co-defendants while being mindful to address "everything else affecting Fulton [County]."

The Georgia Court of Appeals ruled in a 2-1 decision earlier this week that Willis' romantic relationship with Wade created an appearance of impropriety that required her removal from the case as prosecutor. The decision of whether to continue prosecuting the case or drop it entirely will now rest in the hands of the Prosecuting Attorneys' Council of Georgia (PACGA), unless Willis successfully appeals her disqualification to the Georgia Supreme Court. However, Atlanta-based criminal defense attorney Andrew Fleischman posted to Bluesky that the PACGA continuing the case was unlikely given that it declined to continue prosecuting a case earlier this year after a prosecutor's recusal.

"The citizens of Fulton County deserved better. We deserved prosecutions that would stand or fall on the merits of evidence, not collapse due to preventable personal conflicts of interest," Smith wrote. "Moving forward, the Trump case should serve as a stark reminder that the integrity of our justice system depends not just on what we do, but how we do it. Prosecutors should be beyond reproach and must maintain the highest ethical standards, especially in high-profile cases where public trust is paramount.

Click here to read Smith's op-ed in full.

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