At one point, everything was going wrong for former President Trump. Now the tables have turned.
Because Donald Trump has submitted an emergency court filing after discovering a disturbing truth about Fani Willis.
Legal professionals are questioning Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ use of public funds after new documents were released showing that Willis employed her suspected lover’s law partner for $150 per hour in the district attorney’s office.
County records show that since 2021, Christopher Campbell, a partner at Wade & Campbell Firm, has earned $126,070 from the Office of the District Attorney. Reports have uncovered contracts showing that beginning in January 2021, Willis engaged Campbell to evaluate sensitive material as a “Taint Attorney” for $150 per hour.
To protect client information that could be subject to attorney-client privilege or otherwise compromised by prosecutors, “taint attorneys” assist in reviewing search warrant documents.
Fulton County DA Fani Willis falsely stated Sunday that she paid all special prosecutors working on the case against former President Donald Trump the same hourly rate as her alleged romantic partner, Nathan Wade, documents obtained by the @DailyCaller News Foundation show.🧵
— Katelynn Richardson (@katesrichardson) January 16, 2024
In a petition last week, a co-defendant of former President Donald Trump asserted that Willis had granted a “lucrative” contract to Wade, her alleged romantic partner. The co-defendant further claimed that she had profited from the arrangement while he utilized the funds for vacations and cruises. The motion went on to say that Willis paid Wade using money she asked for to clear a COVID-19 case backlog, and that she never had the authorization from the Fulton County Board of Commissioners to do so.
Legal professionals informed reporters this weekend that the events surrounding the contracts cast doubt on Willis’ financial distribution.
If Campbell’s services as a taint attorney were retained for the Trump case, payments to him could cause Willis further complications, according to John Malcolm, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Criminal Division and current vice president of the Heritage Foundation’s Institute for Constitutional Government, who spoke with reporters with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“It’s not just the issue about Wade being her paramour and the issue of kickbacks, but she also got the funds by misleading the Fulton County Commissioners about what the funds were going to be used for,” he expressed. “In addition to that, it would enrich Wade’s firm.”
For the Trump lawsuit, Willis retained the services of three outside attorneys: Wade, John Floyd, and Anna Cross. According to Willis, she paid each of the three special counsels on the Trump lawsuit a comparable hourly fee. However, billing documents recently released showed that she paid Floyd less than her romantic partner, Wade.
According to contract documents, Willis also hired Anna Cross, a prosecutor with more than two decades expertise who has represented Georgia in several high-profile homicide cases, to assist her for $250 per hour.
As a special prosecutor, Wade earned $250 per hour, $100 more than his colleague Campbell, according to contracts and billing records beginning on November 1, 2021. According to county records, since the beginning of 2022, Wade has earned roughly $654,000 from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office.
Additionally, since 2021, the District Attorney’s office has compensated Terrence Bradley, who was a former legal partner of Wade and Campbell, $74,480, as shown in the county filings.
Campbell also agreed to serve as a “First Appearance Attorney” at $65 per hour under a different agreement that ran from March 1, 2021, to April 30, 2021.
One of the duties of this position is to represent the district attorney’s office during the defendant’s First Appearance hearing. This hearing, which takes place before a judge within 72 hours of the defendant being apprehended is to discuss the bond issue and inform the defendant of the charges against them.
“This is a mystery in and of itself,” Atlanta-based criminal defense attorney and legal analyst Philip Holloway shared with reporters. “I have no clue why any DA’s office needs to pay a private lawyer to handle ‘first appearance’ calendars. Any Assistant DA could easily do that. They are already on the payroll and it is the most simple of all tasks.”
According to Holloway, Campbell appears to be involved in what is typically seen as a “conflict of interest” when he serves as both a taint attorney (an impartial third party who decides whether privileged information should be withheld from the prosecutor) and a “de facto” prosecutor (representing the District Attorney’s office).
“I think there’s a lot of questions that have to be answered,” Holloway claimed.
Malcolm mentioned that the Trump case could require the services of a taint attorney, but it is not apparent from the contracts alone which cases Campbell was involved in.
Malcolm informed the DCNF that there would be a need for a taint attorney because of the numerous privilege concerns that would arise in the Trump case, including attorney-client privilege and executive privilege.
You would typically “expect a totally outside lawyer” to check for these kind of concerns, Malcolm said, adding that it “might be a bit of a problem that he is at the same firm” as Wade.
Stay tuned to the DC Daily Journal.
