On Friday, Georgia Judge Scott McAfee suggested that a gag order could be imposed on the Fulton County District Attorney’s office to prevent it from mentioning the case against former President Trump and other defendants in a public setting.
McAfee ruled on Friday that Willis’s once-romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade constituted an appearance of conflict of interest in the racketeering case and barred the prosecutors from continuing to oversee it unless either Willis or Wade leaves the case.
“The time may well have arrived for an order preventing the State from mentioning the case in any public forum to prevent prejudicial pretrial publicly, but that is not the motion presently before the Court,” McAfee said in suggesting the possibility.
In his 23-page ruling, the judge criticized the district attorney at multiple turns, both for the relationship and for her public comments during her testimony.
After being accused of having an affair with Wade, in her first public comments, Willis defended his qualifications and role in the case.
She then implied that race played a role in the criticism of their relationship. Willis argued that people had only attacked Wade, not the other two special prosecutors hired to the case, who are white.
McAfee said her speech was intended to “cast racial aspersions” at Mike Roman, one of Trump’s co-defendants in the case, who brought forth the accusations against Willis.
McAfee argued that her comment was “still legally improper.”
“Providing this type of public comment creates dangerous waters for the District Attorney to wade further into,” he wrote.
The judge then went as far to say that a gag order may be possible to prevent a future jury pool from being prejudiced by Willis’s comments.
