Looks like the February 15th hearing ordered by Judge Scott McAfee in Fulton County will provide some real fireworks. Despite Fani Willis’ attempts to deflect attention from her hiring her alleged boyfriend to prosecute the RICO case against Donald Trump et al, it appears that the hearing will cast a wide net to get to the bottom of the motion to disqualify Willis and Nathan Wade.

That net includes Willis and Wade, obviously, but also their co-workers, according to CNN. Michael Roman’s defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant says that the exact number of other subpoenas will depend on how Willis and Wade respond to the disqualification motion, due on February 2nd:

A current and former law partner to Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor leading the 2020 election subversion case in Georgia, have been told to expect a subpoena to testify at a hearing next month on whether he and the district attorney who brought the case should be disqualified over their alleged affair and financial ties, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.

The district attorney, Fani Willis, also is expected to be subpoenaed, sources say, and possibly others in her office.

And the two had better be prepared, Merchant warns, because she and her team have collected more evidence than just the bank and travel records from Jocelyn Wade:

In the days since leveling the allegations of the affair in her motion to dismiss the case, Merchant told CNN that she and her team have uncovered more evidence to buttress the claims, including confirming the trips Willis and Wade took were personal vacations, and not work-related business trips.

“I think what’s relevant is to look at the personal nature of the trips. These are trips that neither Fani nor Nathan got reimbursement for. They didn’t get reimbursement through the county, they didn’t get reimbursement through her campaign,” Merchant said when asked about the nature of the trips.

One has to wonder whether co-workers and subordinates of Wade and Willis have shared further evidence. It’s pretty easy to assume that tickets on a cruise are not “work related,” not unless Willis went undercover to investigate cruise lines. (Not too many of them operate within Willis’ jurisdiction of Fulton County anyway, obviously.) Merchant may be signaling to Willis that she can’t bluff her way out of this issue with a misleading or vague response to the motion, due a week from tomorrow.

And by the way, that’s not the only disqualification motion on the table now. As of this morning, Trump himself has joined the motion to disqualify Willis and her office, and also for a full dismissal of the charges over the alleged misconduct. Trump’s motion argues as well that Willis’ attempt to inject race into the question has needlessly inflamed the case and the jury pool:

Former U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday joined an effort by a co-defendant in his Georgia election interference case to disqualify prosecutor Fani Willis and dismiss the criminal charges, according to a court filing.

Trump co-defendant Michael Roman has alleged in previous court filings that Willis had an inappropriate relationship with Nathan Wade, the lawyer she hired to help run the criminal case.

Trump’s defense team endorsed those claims and leveled new accusations that Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, “inappropriately injected race into the case and stoked racial animus” during a speech responding to Roman’s allegations.

Well, there’s certainly no doubt that Willis did exactly that. In her speech on the Sunday before Martin Luther King Day at his old church, Willis explicitly accused her critics of being motivated by racism. In earlier responses to defense attorneys on the case, Willis and her subordinates also accused them of racism after they complained that prosecutors were ignoring their e-mails. Whether or not that’s enough to get disqualified from the case is a question for McAfee, but like the receipts, it’s also a fact.

What’s next? The next scheduled milestone in the case is February 2, when Willis and Wade have to submit their formal responses to the questions raised in the disqualification motions. If they’re smart, though, they’ll recuse before then and let some other jurisdiction take the case … if anyone else really wants it now.