Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis attends a hearing to revoke Harrison Floyd's bail at the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta on November 21, 2023.
Dennis Byron | Reuters
A judge in the US state of Georgia on Monday blocked – for now – legal testimony from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in the context of her divorce from Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade. Wade was appointed by Willis to oversee the election criminal proceedings against former President Donald Trump.
Cobb County Superior Court Judge Henry Thompson said he needed to hear Nathan Wade's testimony before deciding whether Willis should be allowed to testify in Jocelyn Wade's lawyers' divorce proceedings.
“In my view, Mr. Wade is the first and best source of information about his income and how it is being spent. He also has first-hand knowledge of whether he is having an extramarital affair,” Thompson said.
Willis is trying to block the testimony because there are questions about whether she had a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, while at the same time he and his law firm were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by Fulton County to serve as special counsel in Trump's criminal case.
Trump is charged with organized crime and other charges related to his efforts to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 Georgia election.
Thompson also said he would again keep the Wades' divorce case under seal after determining that procedures to keep the file secret from the public were not followed.
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One of Trump's co-defendants in the criminal case alleges that Willis and Nathan Wade were guilty of misconduct by “maintaining an inappropriate, secret personal relationship throughout the course of the proceedings that resulted in the Special Counsel and, in turn, the District Attorney profiting substantially from these proceedings at taxpayer expense.”
In a court document, Jocelyn Wade stated that her husband had taken several trips since the divorce and “there is clear evidence that Ms. Willis was the intended travel partner on at least some of these trips, as evidenced by the flights he booked for her as a companion.”
“The defendant wishes to obtain the testimony of Ms. Willis to find out details of her love affair with the plaintiff, as there appears to be no reasonable explanation for her travels other than a love affair,” the filing states.
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