Who is Mike Roman, the Trump co-defendant threatening Willis’s most important case?

A lesser-known co-defendant charged alongside former President Donald Trump in Georgia is jeopardizing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s racketeering election interference case by making allegations of impropriety that, if true, may result in her removal from the case. Mike Roman, 52, is one of 18 allies of Trump indicted by a Fulton County grand jury for allegedly conspiring to undo President Joe Biden’s victory in the Peach State. Last month, Roman dropped a bombshell complaint alleging Willis and her hired special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, engaged in an “improper, clandestine” relationship that raises questions about whether the pair misused thousands of dollars in taxpayer funds. Roman’s lawyer Ashleigh Merchant wrote about the allegations in a Jan. 8 complaint to Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the case. McAfee has already ordered Willis to respond to the allegations by Feb. 2 in court filings and has set up a Feb. 15 hearing to consider the complaint. Additionally, Merchant filed a lawsuit against Willis on Wednesday that seeks to subpoena her, Wade, and others in the district attorney’s office. While Roman’s filing lacked specific evidence, a separate court record from Wade’s previously sealed divorced case leaked on Jan. 19, revealing credit card transactions from Wade showing he and Willis went on a Royal Caribbean cruise together in October 2022 and that he paid for at least two flights, months after her office hired him in January of that year. Now, Trump and a third co-defendant, Robert Cheeley, are joining Roman’s motion to disqualify both Willis and Wade from the case and dismiss the indictment, a steep request that could, at a minimum, result in a judge ordering a substitute prosecutor. Here is what we know about Roman and his knack for opposition research: A ‘skilled operative’ who is ‘fighting for his life’ Roman was a campaign aide during Trump’s 2020 election and is known for his previous job overseeing a research unit for the Koch network, working in the former Trump administration alongside a top attorney, Don McGahn, and helping to vet judicial nominations, including Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, among other accomplishments. A source familiar with Roman’s background who did not want to be named due to occupational concerns told the Washington Examiner that Roman is such a “skilled operative” that it “does not surprise me” if it was Roman himself who uncovered the information leading to the allegations of Willis and Wade first raised in a filing by his lawyer. “All this quality of information, where it’s not happening anywhere else in the Trump world, the reason it’s happening here, if I’m guessing, is because Mike Roman is personally fighting for his life,” the first source said. A second source who has known Roman since the early 1990s told the Washington Examiner that Roman had actually recently admitted to handling much of the research work that went into the complaint against the district attorney. The source did not get into specifics about how Trump’s co-defendant discovered the alleged relationship between Willis and Wade. How did Roman know about Wade’s divorce? Without proceedings in Wade’s divorce from his wife of 26 years, Joycelyn Wade, Roman may not have had the means to convince the public or a courtroom of his claims that Nathan Wade and Willis were behaving improperly and financially benefiting from Nathan Wade’s placement as special counsel. “Somebody might have tipped him off that there was an ugly divorce,” J. Christian Adams, a conservative elections attorney who has been following the developments in Fulton County, told the Washington Examiner. “Roman probably got wind of a divorce or found out on his own because all you have to do is log into county clerk litigation records if they exist online. Or you just run down to Atlanta and you get on a morning flight and go down to the courthouse and start looking. He might, in fact, have some familiarity with them, considering he has a matter in Fulton County Court,” Adams said. On the same day as Roman’s Jan. 8 complaint, Joycelyn Wade’s divorce lawyer Andrea Hastings issued a subpoena to Willis to testify in the divorce case. Hastings told a local NBC News affiliate this week that she issued the subpoena after receiving information from an open records request and Nathan Wade himself. “We didn’t know about a potential romantic relationship between Nathan Wade and Fani Willis until immediately before Christmas,” Hastings said. “When we came back after the first of the year, we prepared and issued the subpoena.” Joycelyn Wade’s counsel previously sought to depose Willis for the divorce case, though the district attorney may not be deposed in the case after all. In a ruling last week, a judge said he wanted to hear from Nathan Wade at a Jan. 31 court hearing before deciding if he needed to hear from Willis. The Wades this week reached a temporary agreement before the scheduled hearing, which settled the issues surrounding attorney fees and alimony, and that hearing was canceled as a result. While their divorce case remains ongoing, Nathan Wade’s counsel is seeking to have the case sealed again. However, the financial records related to Nathan Wade’s transactions and travel purchases in Willis’s name may have been the most necessary revelation needed to aid Roman’s complaint, as the allegations in his filing lacked supporting evidence until the credit card statements came to light in Nathan Wade’s divorce case mid-January. A ‘devout Catholic’ and a ‘highly moral man’ Roman was charged alongside Trump and 17 others in August in a sweeping racketeering indictment alleging that a criminal enterprise conspired to overturn Fulton County’s 2020 presidential election results. His seven charges include racketeering conspiracy and conspiracies to commit forgery, to impersonate a public officer, to commit false statements, and to file false documents in the Fulton County racketeering case. The first source described Roman as a “highly moral man and a devout Catholic” from Kensington, Pennsylvania, who would not “go to the grave having subverted the greatest single democracy in existence.” Two other sources indicated to the Washington Examiner that Roman is the type of person who would not knowingly commit a crime, and if he did, their expectations are that he would own up to any alleged wrongdoing. Roman has pleaded not guilty to all the charges. “Roman is going to beat his foes, and he knows how to do it,” Adams said, adding that Willis “picked the wrong oppo researcher to indict.” Will prosecutors try to make Roman ‘flip’ on ex-POTUS? Part of Willis’s strategy in handling the racketeering case has been to convince some of Trump’s co-defendants to accept plea deals. Former attorneys for Trump Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, and Jenna Ellis all took plea agreements just days apart from each other and agreed to “testify truthfully” at a future trial in the case. According to communications that surfaced in 2022 thanks to congressional investigators for the Jan. 6 committee, Roman in 2020 handled the brunt of organizing seven slates of fake Trump electors purporting to represent the electoral votes from battleground states, including Pennsylvania. A report from the Guardian in November indicated that Fulton County prosecutors were not interested in offering plea deals to three main defendants: Trump, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and attorney Rudy Giuliani. However, the report noted prosecutors could potentially foresee additional plea deals made for defendants outside of that small group. The second unnamed source, who confirmed Roman was behind the research that led to the complaint against Willis, said he thinks it would be convenient for Roman to be offered a plea deal as a means to resolve his legal troubles but that any potential offer by prosecutors would be “viable.” “There’s no avenue in a plea deal for him to make any money for him and his family to survive,” the source said, noting that Roman has at least six children. If he agreed to take a plea offer, he “can’t work on any more campaigns,” the source said. “What a great way for a Democrat to take the No. 1 Republican opposition researcher in the country, if not the world, off the table.” The three sources familiar with Roman all described his loyalties to Trump as conventionally supportive, suggesting that he strongly backs the former president based on his viability as the strongest candidate for the Republican Party to take on President Joe Biden in the November general election. But like many of his co-defendants who have been forced to help themselves, Trump also isn’t helping Roman with any funds for his legal fees, and several of the sources pointed to Roman’s establishment of an online fundraiser as a sign that he is willing to fight the charges the whole way through. “Guys like Mike won’t lay down. You know, they’re not going to go quietly in the night. Not when they’re getting screwed,” the second source said. What will the judge decide at the Feb. 15 hearing? In addition to the subpoenas for Willis and Wade, Roman’s lawyer issued subpoenas to several employees of the district attorney’s office, including Daysha Young, an executive district attorney who is assigned to the Trump case. Also on the subpoena list is Tia Green, an executive assistant to Willis; Sonya Allen, an assistant district attorney who previously worked with Wade in Cobb County; Mike Hill, an investigator assigned to the Trump case; Dexter Bond, the office’s chief operating officer; Capers Green, the office’s chief of investigation; and Thomas Ricks, an investigator assigned to Willis’s security team. Willis is expected to resist any calls to recuse herself from the case, according to a statement from her office on Thursday, while she and other targets of Roman’s subpoenas could attempt to quash them. Although it’s unclear how the judge in Fulton County will decide to handle Roman’s complaint, the co-defendant has clearly composed a gambit strong enough to convince Trump to join in making the same allegations. Legal experts told the Washington Examiner that the judge could at best decide that Willis can no longer prosecute the case herself, casting doubt on the idea that Roman’s complaint could doom the indictment entirely. “I think Roman has a winning case here. I don’t think the same thing for all the defendants,” Adams said, adding that his understanding of the indictment leads him to believe that Roman was following the advice of lawyers on Trump’s team when he assembled a group of alternate electors. Adams said he believes the charges levied against Roman are “extremely weak.” “I don’t believe that about everybody that’s been charged,” Adams added. However, he said the decision by Trump and another defendant to join Roman’s complaint could hurt the trio of defendants in the end. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER “I don’t think it helps Roman that all these other defendants are piling on the theory. I think that actually hurts him. Because it was his idea,” Adams said. “Everybody else jumping on without doing the legwork is going to make it harder for the judge to rule in favor of Roman,” the attorney added.

Fani Willis’s Affair: There Are Receipts The likelihood of recusal just increased. TECHNO FOG JAN 19

The explosive allegations that could possibly sink Fulton County’s RICO case against Donald Trump, et al. – that she is having an ongoing affair with Nathan Wade, the Special Prosecutor she appointed to persecute Trump – have now been corroborated. On January 8, attorneys for defendant Michael Roman (who faces various charges for challenging the 2020 election) filed this motion, alleging (in part) that Willis and Wade must be disqualified from the case due to ethical violations and prosecutorial abuses due to their affair. Specifically, the attorneys for Roman alleged that DA Willis and Wade: “have traveled personally together to such places as Napa Valley, Florida, and the Caribbean and the special prosecutor has purchased tickets for both of them to travel on both the Norwegian and Royal Caribbean cruise lines.” Those were serious allegations. And they were very specific as to the locations they traveled and Wade’s purchase of the tickets. It’s one thing to hear gossip from the Fulton County DA’s office… but how could Roman’s attorneys know all the particulars? Because there are receipts. They all come from Wade’s Cobb County divorce proceedings with his soon to be ex-wife, Joycelyn Wade. Joycelyn has sought to depose Willis as part of the divorce case, alleging that Willis has an ongoing affair with her husband and that Willis would have insight into Nathan Wade’s actions and the marriage itself – knowledge that would help the divorce court divide the marital assets and calculate spousal support. Willis sought a protective order to prevent her deposition and gave implied threats that Joycelyn was obstructing the DA’s investigation of Trump. Yet Willis never denied the affair. And so attorneys for Joycelyn Wade dropped today’s bomb, which included her husband’s credit card statements where trips were purchased for Willis. You can read it here. Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade has, according to his credit card statements, taken trips to San Francisco and Napa Valley, Florida, gone on a Caribbean cruise, Australia, Panama, and Belize. These trips all took place after he filed for divorce. And Willis – the boss of Nathan Wade, the woman who enriched him by appointing him as Special Prosecutor – joined Wade some of (if not all) of these trips. Here’s the rundown. April 25, 2023: Nathan Wade purchases Delta Airlines tickets for himself and Fani Willis. As part of this trip, they apparently traveled to Napa Valley and stayed at the Doubletree hotel. Let’s be clear - this is just the start of the documentation of the affair between Wade and Willis. Not only will more of Wade’s credit card statements be released, but there is a real possibility (we estimate at 70-30) that Fani Willis will be deposed as a witness in the divorce proceeding. She’ll be under oath, and her answers could very well force the recusal of herself and Wade from the Trump case. The Reactionary is a reader-supported publication. As we previously reported, there is a glaring ethical violation in Wade’s appointment, as it has served to pay for domestic and international trips for Willis, his supervisor. Compounding the violation is that Wade has been overpaid - his office allegedly receiving nearly $1 million since he was appointed to the case - and that he is, by all accounts, unqualified to prosecute this case. The Georgia Supreme Court agrees, observing a conflict of interest can “arise where the prosecutor has acquired a personal interest or stake in the defendant’s conviction.” Willis and Wade have by February 2, 2024 to respond to the motion by Roman’s attorneys. The court has set an evidentiary hearing on the matter for February 15, 2024. If I’m Roman’s attorney, I’m calling Fani Willis and Nathan Wade to the stand. There could be fireworks - if the court allows their testimony. Assuming they recuse themselves or are disqualified, what’s next? We figure it most likely that Fulton County, which has an expressed interest in prosecuting Trump, assigns the case to one of the other attorneys currently assigned to the matter. This would allow the case to go forward. Or, there’s the potential that an outside lawyer is appointed. That would be the best chance for dismissal, as there are serious concerns with using Georgia’s RICO statute to target Trump and the rest of the defendants. After all, Georgia’s RICO law emphasizes that it should be used to prosecute financial crimes or those involving injury to another - not for challenges to an election. Jonathan Turley explains: “Some prosecutors would likely balk at the tenuous connections used to sweep Trump into this grand conspiracy theory, which many critics believe Willis has pursued for political purposes.” We’re not sure Fani Willis would allow that. It’s a certainty that she’s already thinking of ways to have this case survive if she has to recuse. © 2024 Techno Fog 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 Unsubscribe