But she didn’t hire him on her own dime. She used her position as DA to have the DA’s office hire him to try the case.
You are absolutely not allowed to hire from a pool of people you know on the government’s dime. If the Department of Energy puts out a contract to build a power plant, the guy in charge of who gets hired has to disclose any conflict of interest, and is 1000% not allowed to award that work to a friend without oversight.
And if they did, and that friend then started giving them expensive gifts, that’s a huge huge no no.
And while you’re right that she does claim that they split the cost of the vacations, she claims that she reimbursed him for her half in cash, and has no receipts to that affect. Which could very well be true, but you must admit looks terrible.