Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has been subpoenaed to testify in special prosecutor Nathan Wade's divorce case, the Wall Street Journal reports. Willis is accused of being involved in an “inappropriate” romantic relationship as the two prosecuted former President Donald Trump and others.
According to the filing obtained by WSJ, a defense attorney said he served Willis with a subpoena Monday morning at her Atlanta office. The subpoena compels her to testify in the divorce proceedings between Nathan Wade and his wife Joycelyn Wade.
The subpoena was served hours before Mike Roman, a former Trump campaign official who is facing criminal charges, filed a motion accusing Willis and Wade of misconduct and citing an “inappropriate, secret personal relationship during the pendency of this case.” called. Willis hired Wade as a prosecutor in the Trump election interference case in Georgia.
Roman's attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, claimed in the motion that the alleged relationship resulted in “the special prosecutor and, in turn, the district attorney, benefiting significantly from this prosecution at taxpayer expense.”
Merchant said her claims were backed up by sealed documents from the divorce case and that she had asked a judge to unseal the documents.
In 2022 and 2023, Wade was paid about $654,000 in legal fees for his work on the investigation, according to county records approved by the district attorney's office, The Hill reported.
Although Roman claimed the couple traveled together to “traditional vacation destinations,” as The Hill points out, the new filing contained no documentation of those alleged trips.
The trader's filing alleged that Willis and Wade “violated laws governing the use of public funds, suffered from irreparable conflicts of interest, and violated their oaths of office under the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct and are barred from prosecution in this matter.” should.”
Merchant said she reviewed minutes of board meetings since Willis took office and found no record of Wade's contract, which the Fulton County Board of Commissioners reported was set to be approved by the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, according to the WSJ.
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In an email to The New York Times, Clark D. Cunningham, a law and ethics professor at Georgia State University, questioned why Roman's file contained no evidence of a relationship between Willis and Wade. After reviewing the file, Cunningham said, “It was incumbent on her to make this part of her application by, for example, attaching affidavits from witnesses with personal knowledge or authenticated documents.”
Merchant told NYT that she reviewed records showing that the two prosecutors traveled together to vacation destinations and that Wade paid for some of the tickets; Roman's lawyer said she had requested the documents be unsealed in a separate court proceeding.
