It seemed an unusual decision when Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, turned to a suburban defense attorney to oversee what appeared to be the biggest task of her career: building an election interference case against former President Donald J. Trump.
Nathan Wade, whom Ms. Willis chose for the job, had little experience as a prosecutor. But he was a trusted friend and mentor, she said in 2022, and was willing to take the job if more experienced prosecutors would not.
Now the relationship between Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade is at the center of the Georgia case against Mr. Trump, who is awaiting trial along with 14 co-defendants on charges of conspiring to overturn the former president's 2020 election loss in the state.
On Monday, the attorney for one of the co-defendants, Michael A. Roman, alleged in a court filing that Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade were romantic partners who “significantly benefited from this prosecution at taxpayer expense.” Without providing any evidence, the filing accused the two of taking vacations along with the money Mr. Wade earned while working as a special prosecutor for Ms. Willis' office. According to county records, the office paid Mr. Wade a total of $653,881.
Neither Ms. Willis nor Mr. Wade have commented publicly on the allegations. A spokesman for Ms. Willis said on Monday that her office would “respond appropriately in court.”
Mr. Roman's defense attorney, Ashleigh B. Merchant, argued that it all amounted to a conflict of interest that should disqualify Mr. Wade, Ms. Willis and the entire Fulton County District Attorney's Office from prosecuting the case.
“As the layers unfold,” Ms. Merchant wrote in her filing, “it becomes clear that the district attorney and special prosecutor personally benefited from this prosecution at the expense of Fulton County.”
It remains to be seen whether the lawsuit can derail the case, although several legal experts said this week that some of Ms. Merchant's efforts to dismiss the case were unlikely to succeed.
But the matter has already become embarrassing for Ms. Willis, raising suspicion around the case and reinforcing Mr. Trump's longstanding efforts to delegitimize the case and portray Ms. Willis as corrupt.
According to a court filing obtained by The New York Times, Ms. Willis was served a subpoena on Monday by his wife, Joycelyn Wade, in Mr. Wade's ongoing divorce proceedings. In the document, a defense attorney confirms that he left the subpoena with an assistant to Ms. Willis in her office in downtown Atlanta.
Andrea Hastings, a lawyer for Ms. Wade, said she sent the subpoena requesting Ms. Willis to testify at a deposition on Jan. 23. The Wall Street Journal previously reported on the subpoena.
In arguing for dismissal of the case, Mr. Roman's legal team wrote that Ms. Willis failed to properly obtain approval from the Fulton County Commission before hiring Mr. Wade. But on Tuesday, Pete Skandalakis, a Republican who leads the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia – a state agency that provides services to prosecutors – said that district attorneys in Georgia are not required to seek approval from county commissions before making such hires.
Ms. Merchant also argues that the prosecution improperly filed Mr. Wade's oath of office. However, a similar argument from another co-defendant in the case has already been rejected by the presiding judge.
It is also unclear whether evidence will emerge of a romantic relationship between the two prosecutors. Ms Merchant said on Monday night she believed Mr Wade's sealed divorce proceedings contained evidence that the couple had traveled together; She is trying to make the divorce file public.
But the allegations have already been seized upon by Mr. Trump, who made an unsubstantiated claim in August that Ms. Willis was having an affair with a gang member, which she strongly denied. On Tuesday evening, he sent a fundraising email to supporters saying the case “must be DISMISSED!” and said that Ms. Willis “allegedly used the false case against me to frame her 'lover' for a crime.” SELF ENHANCEMENT PROGRAM worth over half a MILLION dollars!”
A number of legal and ethics experts who reviewed the new filing were skeptical that it would blow up the case, although some said the questions it raised warranted further investigation and could damage public trust in law enforcement.
Renee Knake Jefferson, an ethics expert and law professor at the University of Houston Law Center, said she believed the file contained serious allegations but that they would not cloud the case.
“A personal relationship between two prosecutors does not change the facts and evidence on which the prosecution was based,” Ms. Jefferson said.
Ms Jefferson said it was important to get to the nature of the relationship between Ms Willis and Mr Wade to determine whether one or both should be excluded from the case.
Ms. Willis has hired a number of outside lawyers to assist her in the sprawling Trump case, which involves a complex racketeering indictment that initially listed 19 co-defendants. Four have pleaded guilty since arraignment in August.
In addition to Mr. Wade, the outside lawyers include John Floyd, a mild-mannered, binder-wielding man with extensive expertise in criminal law, and Anna Cross, a veteran litigator who prosecuted Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump's former White House chief has subjected employees and a defendant in the case to withering cross-examination in a related hearing in federal court in September.
In her 2022 interview, Ms. Willis said she chose Mr. Wade for the job because he was a trustworthy friend and contemporary (she is 53, Mr. Wade is 54) who she considered thick-skinned enough to withstand not just attacks from to withstand him Trumpland, but their own criticism.
“Sometimes you can't yell at this new generation and they're kind of weak, aren't they?” Ms. Willis said, adding: “I need someone to go after and they can sort of wipe their wounds and we can get back to it.” Go to work.”
Still, Mr. Wade's appointment to lead the prosecution of a former president raised some eyebrows in Atlanta's legal community, given his limited work handling major criminal cases. His only known full-time job as a prosecutor between October 1998 and May 1999 was as an assistant attorney in Cobb County in the Atlanta suburbs, according to Ross Cavitt, a county spokesman. This task usually includes processing cases of administrative offenses.
(Mr. Wade announces that he has been named the state's “special assistant attorney general,” but Kara Richardson, a spokeswoman for the attorney general's office, said in August that she could find no records of cases he worked on for that office have. )
Mr. Wade, who could not be reached for this article, earned a law degree from John Marshall Law School in Illinois, which eventually merged with the University of Illinois Law School at Chicago. At hearings related to the Trump case, he exudes confidence, usually entering courtrooms in well-tailored suits, surrounded by a crowd of other prosecutors.
Although he occasionally speaks with the presiding judge, he also seems comfortable with various team members being in the spotlight during the hearing.
In his private practice he seems to have been a legal all-rounder. His law firm Wade & Campbell's website states: “Whether you need representation after a serious car accident or are going through a change in your personal life that requires representation in a family law matter; Whether you have a contract dispute or are involved in a civil lawsuit of any kind, Nathan J. Wade will be a zealous advocate for you.”
In the future, Mr. Wade might add language about prosecuting a former president to that list — but only if he survives the current storm.
