Report: Judge in Fulton County’s Trump Case Donated to Fani Willis

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the Trump election interference case, donated to county prosecutor Fani Willis, financial disclosures show.

The judge donated $150 to Willis in June 2020, while working for the Justice Department.

“The donation itself is more or less a token amount and was made prior to his becoming a judge,” legal analyst Philip Holloway told the Daily Caller. “But failure to disclose to the defendants a political donation to the prosecutor can be seen as a present appearance of a conflict of interest. Judges are required to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

Gov. Brian Kemp (R), who refused to launch a criminal probe into Willis, appointed McAfee to the bench and was subsequently sworn in on February 1, 2023.

Previously, McAfee worked for Willis in the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office before she won the election in 2020, the New York Times reported in August.

Willis dislodged a longtime former county prosecutor accused of corruption. She assumed office on January 1, 2021. She campaigned in 2020 on not engaging in sexual misconduct, as her predecessor was accused of doing. The irony of Willis’s campaign promise was evident after allegations of her own affair surfaced, along with financial implications.

In 2023, former President Donald Trump and codefendant Mike Roman accused Willis of maintaining an improper romantic relationship with her top Trump case prosecutor, Nathan Wade.

Wade testified before McAfee on Thursday that his relationship with Willis began in 2022 after Willis opened the case against Trump in 2021. But former Fulton County District Attorney employee and Willis’s college friend, Robin Yeartie, said she was definitely in a relationship with Nathan Wade since 2019, contradicting Wade and Willis.