Report: Georgia prosecutor targeting Trump has had ongoing affair with special prosecutor in case, may have benefited financially

FULTON COUNTY, GA- A bombshell revelation out of Fulton County, Georgia, may derail one of the trumped-up criminal investigations into former President Donald Trump. 

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that District Attorney Fani Willis, the George Soros-funded Fulton County DA, hired a romantic partner to prosecute the former president and financially benefited from the relationship. Those allegations were included in a court filing lodged on Monday, which argues the criminal charges in the case are unconstitutional. 

The public filing alleges, the outlet reported, that special prosecutor Nathan Wade, a private attorney who has worked on the Trump election interference case, “paid for lavish vacations he took with Willis using Fulton County funds his law firm received.” Wade was paid nearly $654,000 in legal fees for work his firm completed in the case since January 2022. That compensation had to be authorized by Willis. 

The motion was filed on behalf of a former Trump campaign official, Michael Roman, and seeks to dismiss charges against him. Short of that, it asks for Willis, Wade, and the entire DA’s office to be dismissed from prosecuting the case. 

In response to the court filing, Pallavi Bailey, a spokesman for the DA, said Willis’s office will respond to the allegations “through appropriate court filings.” The paper reached out to Wade for comment, however, no response was given. 

While the document doesn’t offer solid proof of romantic ties between Willis and Wade, it said that “sources close to both the special prosecutor and the district attorney have confirmed they had an ongoing, personal relationship.” 

Records show that Willis is divorced. Wade, however is married. Or was married. He is currently undergoing divorce proceedings, which is where Roman’s lawyer, Ashleigh Merchant, learned of the liaison between Willis and Wade. Merchant made copies of certain documents, however, for unknown reasons, the case file was sealed, which was improper because no court hearing was held as required under Georgia law. 

Since the case remains under seal, Merchant will release information she obtained from the divorce file when the seal is lifted; she has asked a judge to unseal that case file. 

The allegations threaten to undermine Willis’s politically motivated prosecution of President Trump and 14 other co-defendants. If nothing else, it will have a detrimental effect on the DA’s professional ethics. 

One legal expert believes Willis may be in a pickle if the allegations are true. 

According to Stephen Gillers, professor emeritus at the New York University Law School, who the Journal-Constitution said has written extensively about legal and judicial ethics, it is essential to look into Willis’ decision-making process before it is decided if indictments in the election case are dismissed. 

If the allegations pan out, Gillers said, “Willis was conflicted in the investigation and prosecution of this case” and couldn’t impart the “independent professional judgment” required of her position as DA. 

“That does not mean that her decisions were, in fact, improperly motivated,” Gillers said in an email. “It does mean that the public and the state, as her client, could not have the confidence in the independent judgment that her position required her to exercise.” 

The court filing alleges Willis and Wade have been engaged in a romantic relationship going back to before she appointed Wade as a special prosecutor. It shows they traveled to Napa Valley in California and Florida and sailed on at least two Caribbean cruises on Norwegian and Royal Caribbean, using tickets Wade purchased. The filing didn’t include documentation of those purchases. 

The court filing alleges the checks sent to Wade from Fulton County and authorized by Willis and his purchase of vacations for him and Willis amounted to honest services fraud, a federal crime. That involves vendors giving kickbacks to employers and could also be prosecuted under the federal racketeering statute, the motion read. 

In her motion, Merchant said it was “not filed lightly. Nor is it being filed without considerable forethought, research, or investigation.” 

She wrote, however that it was important to raise the issue and hold hearings because the issues “strike at the heart of fairness in our justice system, and, if left unaddressed and unchecked, threaten to taint the entire prosecution of this case, invite error, and completely undermine public confidence in any outcome in this proceeding.” 

The motion alleges that Willis and Wade “have been engaged in an improper, clandestine personal relationship during the pendency of this case, which has resulted in the special prosecutor, and, in turn, the district attorney, profiting significantly from this prosecution at the expense of taxpayers.” 

Wade's appointment was also not authorized or approved by the Fulton Board of Commissioners, another violation of the law, the motion said. Moreover, the motion questions whether Wade is even qualified to work on the case since he has never prosecuted a felony case. Previously, Wade was an assistant solicitor for Cobb County in 1999, handling only misdemeanor cases. 

In a case of impeccable timing, Wade began his contract as special prosecutor on Nov. 1, 2021, only one day before he filed for divorce in Cobb County, the motion read. 

Fox News is also reporting that Wade visited the Biden White House at least twice before charging former President Trump in May and November, 2022. At one of those meetings, he met with the White House counsel. 

Roman’s filing repeats an earlier accusation made against Wade that his two oaths of office were not filed in court before his work on the case; therefore, he misrepresented himself as an authorized special prosecutor. 

That argument was previously dismissed by Judge Scott McAfee, who stated the requirements don’t apply to contractors working on single cases, also noting the defendants didn’t establish a constitutional violation or structural defect to the grand jury process, which warranted an outright dismissal of the case. 

“If this parrot of a motion is somehow not yet dead, the defendant has failed to establish how [Wade’s] actions resulted in a prejudice,” McAfee wrote, channeling a lame Monty Python sketch, the Journal-Constitution noted. 

Despite that previous ruling, which Merchant acknowledged, she said that “in the larger context of the various issues surrounding his appointment, Willis’ lack of authority to appoint him and the conflict of interest issues addressed below, the fact that Wade did not file his oath before beginning work takes on new and more significant meaning and, indeed, constitutes a structural defect in the indictment.” 

The court filing came the same day McAfee set as a deadline for defendants to submit pretrial motions in the case. 

In the case of Roman, he wired as director of Election Day operations for the Trump 2020 campaign. He was charged with seven felony counts in Fulton County, mostly conspiracy charges related to helping organize slates of Trump electors in battleground states allegedly won by Joe Biden, including Georgia. Roman has pleaded not guilty to the charges, and a previous plea deal offered by Willis’ office was turned down. 

Roman was the only of 19 people whom Willis charged that was not recommended for indictment by a special grand jury that devoted eight months to investigate so-called election subversion efforts in Georgia after the 2020 election. He was indicted by a separate grand jury on the criminal charges he now faces.