Trump Lawyer Reviews Relationship Allegations Against Georgia Prosecutors

Former President Donald J. Trump’s lawyer in Atlanta asked a judge on Friday for more time to review “salacious” allegations against two prosecutors leading the racketeering case against Mr. Trump, saying he may join an effort to disqualify them.

The matter came up during a hearing in the election interference case against Mr. Trump and 14 of his allies. The office of Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, has yet to respond to a court filing on Monday that accused her of being romantically involved with the lead prosecutor she hired for the Trump case, Nathan Wade.

Mr. Wade has reaped more than $650,000 in legal fees since Ms. Willis hired him in November 2021. The filing said that Ms. Willis had been “profiting significantly from this prosecution at the expense of the taxpayers,” charging that she and Mr. Wade had taken vacations together with money he made working for her office.

The development has energized Republicans and raised questions about Ms. Willis’s judgment as she tries one of the highest-profile cases in the country. On Friday, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, a Trump ally and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, used the allegations as the basis for seeking more records from the district attorney’s office.

Ms. Willis has previously accused Mr. Jordan of trying “to obstruct a Georgia criminal proceeding and to advance outrageous partisan misrepresentations.”

As Mr. Wade looked on impassively in the courtroom, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Steven H. Sadow, who appeared virtually, asked for an extension of the deadline to file pre-trial motions, which had passed earlier this month.

“This is the first motion in which there have been allegations of fact made which deal directly with our opposition counsel,” Mr. Sadow said. “Suffice it to say that they are salacious and scandalous in nature.”

He said he was “leery” of joining such a motion “without having a better understanding or substantiation of the allegations,” and asked for time to review the matter once Ms. Willis’s office responded. Neither she nor anyone from the office has responded to the allegations since they first came to light on Monday afternoon.

The presiding judge, Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court, granted Mr. Sadow’s request. He said that early February was the soonest he would hold a hearing on the issue.

Mr. Sadow is not the only lawyer reviewing the matter. Craig Gillen, a lawyer for David Shafer, the former head of the state Republican Party, said, “We’re going to do our own investigation and determine whether or not we’re going to adopt that motion or supplement that motion.”

Headlines about the allegations have overtaken news about the case itself this week. The allegations were laid out in a filing from Mike Roman, a former Trump campaign staff member who is among the defendants in the Georgia case. His filing did not offer proof of the relationship between the prosecutors, but it asserted that they have been seen “in a personal relationship capacity” around Atlanta and claimed that people close to both of them have confirmed it.

The filing also suggested that the relationship was the reason Ms. Willis had chosen Mr. Wade, who had never led a high-profile criminal case and had largely worked as a suburban defense lawyer and municipal judge.

The day after Mr. Wade started working for the district attorney’s office, he filed for divorce. Lawyers for his wife, Joycelyn, issued a subpoena this week to Ms. Willis, seeking her testimony on Jan. 23 in the Wades’ divorce case.

Ms. Willis’s office gave no indication on Friday as to when it would submit a filing responding to the claims.

Legal experts generally believe that the accusations are unlikely to derail the case even if they are substantiated, because they don’t speak to its underlying facts. But they could create considerable distractions and problems for Ms. Willis, who is up for re-election this year. Republicans have already accused her of violating county and state laws and ethics rules.

The timing of a trial remains unclear. Ms. Willis’s office requested an Aug. 5 trial date several weeks ago, but the judge has yet to set a date and did not address the matter on Friday. Ms. Willis has said she expects the trial to go into next year.

Georgia is one of a half-dozen swing states conducting investigations or prosecutions related to efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to deploy fake electors to overcome his defeat at the polls. Criminal charges have already been brought against electors in Georgia, Michigan and Nevada, and inquiries are underway in Arizona, New Mexico and Wisconsin.

The Georgia case is the only one that goes beyond fake electors, charging a number of individuals in what prosecutors describe as a wide-ranging conspiracy to keep Mr. Trump in power.

During the hearing on Friday, the judge and the lawyers on both sides worked through a number of pre-trial motions.

Mr. Sadow followed up on a recent filing seeking more information about communications that the Georgia prosecutors had with the White House Counsel’s Office and the House committee that investigated the attack on the U.S. Capitol. While those interactions have led to considerable outrage among Trump allies, the Georgia prosecutors have indicated since 2021 that they wanted to use the House committee as a resource.

And the prosecutors probably consulted with the current White House Counsel’s Office because the testimony of a number of former White House officials, including the former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, was being sought.

Many of the recent filings seek to scupper the Georgia case. One defense lawyer, Christopher Anulewicz, argued on Friday that “every single allegation, every single thing that the state is saying was done wrong are all statements, political statements” about the 2020 election outcome that “fall within the category of civil disobedience.”

John Floyd, a member of the prosecution team, disagreed.

“Lying by making a false statement is not civil disobedience. Perjury is not civil disobedience. These things are deceptive. These things are immoral,” he said. “It is not calling forth a higher moral principle, it is being sneaky and dishonest.”

Christian Boone and Richard Fausset contributed reporting.