Lawyer hired to prosecute Donald Trump in Georgia scrutinised over relationship with Fani Willis
US district attorney Fani Willis brought Nathan Wade on to prosecute the former president but he lacks experience trying felony cases, lawyers say.
Allegations that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis engaged in an improper relationship with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor on her team that brought racketeering charges against Donald Trump and others, are focusing attention on the Atlanta attorney with little previous criminal trial experience.
There exists no record that Wade, a lawyer in private practice hired to lead the Trump case, has ever handled a felony trial in Georgia, according to a filing Monday by a co-defendant in the Trump case.
The filing alleges that Wade and Willis have been in a continuing romantic relationship that predates her hiring him. While the filing didn’t provide evidence of a romantic relationship, it makes a bombshell claim: that Willis hired her alleged boyfriend, and they both financially benefited from the arrangement.
The motion Monday stunned Atlanta’s tight-knit legal community and injected uncertainty into one of the highest-profile prosecutions in the country. Lawyers in Georgia say at a minimum, the allegations in the Monday filing raise questions about why Willis sought Wade’s services.
“My understanding is that he has no felony jury trial experience,” said Chris Timmons, an Atlanta defence lawyer who has prosecuted cases under the same racketeering law used against Trump, known as a RICO statute.
Wade isn’t qualified to serve as a court-appointed defence lawyer in the Trump case, according to Monday’s motion. To pick up such an assignment, a lawyer needs to have tried “at least two criminal trials of similar offences,” according to a 2022 document from the Fulton County Superior Court.
Wade’s lack of relevant experience “would be concerning in any complex felony case, let alone one that is a multi-defendant RICO case,” said Timmons, an ABC News contributor.
A spokesman for Willis didn’t respond to a request for comment Wednesday. Previously, the spokesman said Willis’s office would respond to the allegations in its own filing. Willis’s office hadn’t filed a response as of Wednesday afternoon.
Nathan Wade didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment left on the voicemail at his law office.
Wade’s two-person law firm, Wade & Campbell, handles a range of legal matters from divorces to car accident disputes, according to Wade’s online bio.
After graduating from Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School, Wade worked briefly as an assistant solicitor for Georgia’s Cobb County in 1999, prosecuting misdemeanour cases. He later became a municipal judge in the Atlanta suburb of Marietta, hearing misdemeanour cases and traffic offences. Between 2012 and 2016, Wade ran three times – unsuccessfully – for a judgeship on the Cobb County Superior Court.
Wade has been paid nearly $US654,000 ($974K) in legal fees by Willis’s office since January 2022, according to Fulton County financial records. The last payment to his firm shown in those records is from early October; if Wade continued to receive payments at a similar rate to
the rest of the contract, he could have earned close to $US1 million, according to the motion.
Wade has frequently appeared in court in the Trump case. At a Dec. 1 hearing, Wade responded to arguments by Trump’s lawyer that a trial in late 2024 would interfere with the election.
“The district attorney has made it clear that she has no interest in interfering or getting involved with this presidential election,” Wade said.
Willis and Wade have moved in the same legal circles for years, including overlapping terms as municipal court judges in the Atlanta area.
Monday’s filing alleged Willis awarded Wade a taxpayer-funded salary he has used to pay for trips he took with Willis to Napa Valley and the Caribbean.
Ashleigh Merchant, the lawyer who researched and wrote the filing, said sealed records from Wade’s divorce proceeding from his estranged wife would substantiate her allegations. She has asked a judge to make those records public, arguing they should never have been sealed in the first place.
Wade filed for divorce from his wife, Joycelyn Wade, in November 2021, one day after his first contract with Willis’ office took effect.
The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that Willis has been subpoenaed to testify in Wade’s divorce proceeding, according to a court filing. A lawyer for Joycelyn Wade didn’t immediately provide comment.
According to Merchant’s motion, Wade billed the county for 24 hours of work on a single day in November 2021, shortly after getting the special prosecutor job.
Andrew Fleischman, a criminal defence lawyer in Atlanta who frequently litigates against Willis’s office, called such a claim a red flag. “Most judges would be given serious pause by that number,” Fleischman said.
Merchant’s filing also alleges that Willis improperly paid Wade from county forfeiture funds.
Danny Porter, the former longtime Republican District Attorney for Gwinnett County, a large suburban county northeast of Atlanta, said district attorneys in Georgia receive funds from various sources and “have almost absolute discretion as to how you spend it.” District attorneys hire special prosecutors and consultants all the time, he said. “I can’t say that the expenditures on their face are improper,” he said.
Wade’s credentials have been questioned before. In 2020, a sheriff asked Wade’s law firm to review operations at a jail where several inmates had died.
A local television station sued the sheriff and Wade that year, saying Wade was doing a bogus investigation and was unqualified for the role. The station said the probe was manufactured so that the sheriff would have pretext for denying a public records request, citing a pending investigation.
Wade denied any wrongdoing. A judge ordered the county to provide some documents to the television station, 11Alive, and the lawsuit was settled.
Porter, the former district attorney for Gwinnett County, said that the alleged romantic relationship doesn’t inherently threaten the prosecution of the indictment.
“The inappropriate relations stuff … it’s certainly not grounds to dismiss the case,” said Porter, who added that he knows Willis professionally. He said the allegations still may be awkward for Willis.
If Willis were to recuse herself or be disqualified from the case, the rest of her office would likely be removed as well and it would have to be assigned to another district attorney, he said.
It’s possible, among myriad next steps including Willis responding to the allegations, that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation could investigate the claims, said Scott Key, an attorney in private practice who is a former president of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. The Georgia Bar Association may eventually step in, but it is unlikely it would investigate on its own unless or until a formal complaint was made, he said.
The motion filed by Merchant argues Willis and Wade may themselves be open to racketeering charges on the alleged misuse of funds.
“Willis has proven herself that it doesn’t take much to invoke a RICO liability,” Key said.
The Wall Street Journal
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