Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis has finally admitted to having an affair with Nathan Wade, the prosecutor she hired to oversee the election interference case involving former president Donald Trump, but maintains that the relationship had no impact on the case.
“In a 176-page court filing on Friday, Willis called the claims against her ‘meritless’ and ‘salacious.’ She asked a judge to reject motions from Trump and other co-defendants that seek to disqualify her and her office from the case and to do so without a hearing,” The Washington Post reported. “She denied claims of misconduct and said there was no evidence that the relationship between her and special prosecutor Nathan Wade had prejudiced the case.”
Willis’s response came more than three weeks after Mike Roman, one of Trump’s remaining 14 co-defendants in the criminal case and a former high-ranking campaign aide during the 2020 election, alleged in a court filing that Willis was engaged in a “personal, romantic relationship” with Wade, whose firm has been paid more than $653,000 by the district attorney’s office since he was tapped as an outside prosecutor on the case in November 2021.
Roman claimed Willis may have broken the law by hiring Wade and then allowing him to pay for “vacations across the world” with her that were unrelated to their work on the case. Wade and Willis, Roman’s filing claimed, were “profiting significantly from this prosecution at the expense of the taxpayers.” Roman’s filing, which offered no proof to back up the sensational claims, called for the prosecutors to be disqualified and for the charges against him to be dismissed.
Roman’s motion was later joined by Trump and another co-defendant in the case, Atlanta-area attorney Bob Cheeley, who are also seeking to have the case moved out of Fulton County and charges dismissed.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee has set an evidentiary hearing regarding the allegations for Feb. 15. Roman’s lawyer, Ashleigh Merchant, plans to issue subpoenas for witnesses and documents supporting her client’s claims of misconduct.
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This is the first time that Willis has publicly addressed the allegations of an improper relationship despite the trove of evidence that has come out, including bank records showing that Willis and Wade took trips together to San Francisco, Miami, and Aruba, with tickets purchased under her name. Also raising eyebrows was the fact that Willis paid Wade more than his counterparts, despite his having little to no experience with RICO cases.
Willis’s troubles extend beyond the allegations of an improper relationship with Wade. She reportedly had inappropriate contact with the Biden White House and the partisan J6 Committee, and she has also been accused of firing an employee who blew the whistle on her department’s misuse of federal funds. She also faces impeachment in the Georgia House, and the Georgia Senate has established a committee to investigate her for “various forms of misconduct relating to the prosecution of cases related to the 2020 Presidential Election.”