Fani Willis accepts resignation of deputy Nathan Wade in Trump Georgia case

The Fulton county district attorney on Friday formally accepted the resignation of her top deputy with whom she had a romantic relationship, ensuring she would continue to prosecute the criminal case against Donald Trump over efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.

Related: Fani Willis affair ruling: read Judge Scott McAfee’s decision in full

The move by Fani Willis came shortly after the judge overseeing the case ruled that the relationship had created enough of a distraction that either Willis or the deputy, Nathan Wade, needed to step down.

The choice to step down was straightforward and expected, and Wade submitted his resignation to allow Willis to stay on as lead prosecutor against Trump and dozens of allies indicted on charges of violating Georgia’s state racketeering statute.

“You led a team that secured a true bill of indictment against nineteen individuals who are accused of violating Georgia law to undermine the 2020 election for the former President of the United States,” Willis wrote in a letter obtained by the Guardian.

“Please accept my sincere gratitude on behalf of the citizens of Fulton county, Georgia, for your patriotism, courage, and dedication to justice. I wish you the best in your future endeavors.”

The ruling by the Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee stopped short of disqualifying Willis, which Trump and his co-defendants had sought over allegations that the relationship was a conflict of interest.

The decision avoided catastrophe for Willis. An order removing her and her office from the case would have almost certainly delayed the prosecution significantly during reassignment to another prosecutor in Georgia, who might have opted to toss the charges altogether.

Although the judge found the evidence insufficient to disqualify her from bringing the case, he was unsparing in his criticism of the way Willis so casually handled the relationship and the manner of her testimony on the witness stand during a series of hearings on the matter.

The Wade-Willis relationship amounted to such a fatal appearance of impropriety that one of the pair needed to resign even if no actual conflict of interest existed, the judge wrote, making clear that the commingling of personal and professional relations was untenable.

Shortly after Willis announced that she had accepted Wade’s resignation, Trump went on his Truth Social site and said the development was “BIG STUFF”.

“The Fani Willis lover, Mr Nathan Wade Esq, has just resigned in disgrace,” Trump wrote, among other things.

The Trump co-defendant Michael Roman in January moved to disqualify Willis because of her relationship with Wade, which at the time was not publicly known. Willis and Wade admitted to having a relationship but said it did not begin until after Wade had been hired to work on the Trump case in 2022.

The case being led by Willis’s office contains only some of the dozens of criminal charges against Trump for subversion of his failed 2020 re-election run, retention of classified documents and hush-money payments. In civil litigation, Trump has been found liable of sexual abuse of writer E Jean Carroll and has been adjudicated as having committed business fraud.

Trump nonetheless has secured the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic incumbent Joe Biden for a second presidency in November.

Related: Trump is the true winner in the decision on Fani Willis in the Georgia case