Lawyer deployed to prosecute Trump in Georgia is now under scrutiny himself
Before becoming the special counsel leading the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald J. Trump, Nathan Wade worked as a private attorney and as a municipal court judge in suburban Atlanta.
Now, Mr. Wade is accused of having a relationship with the district attorney who hired him in 2021, Fani T. Willis. A lawsuit filed this week suggested their relationship was the reason she chose Mr. Wade for the high-paying job.
The filing, from a lawyer for one of Mr. Trump’s co-defendants, said that Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade then used some of his earnings, which so far total more than $650,000, to jointly to go on holiday to Napa Valley and the Caribbean, among others.
Mr. Wade was largely unknown when Ms. Willis chose him to lead one of the most high-profile prosecutions in American history.
He was employed for about a year in the late 1990s by the Cobb County Solicitor’s Office, which prosecutes misdemeanors and traffic tickets. It appears that he has had little experience with prosecution thus far.
Later, as an associate judge in Marietta, an Atlanta suburb of about 60,000 residents, Mr. Wade presided over cases involving felonies, traffic tickets and city ordinance violations.
He also ran unsuccessfully to become a judge of the Cobb County Superior Court.
In 2020, Mr. Wade was chosen by the Cobb County Sheriff to investigate the jail deaths there. In June of that year, Mr. Wade was quoted in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution He said he planned to issue a report on prison conditions. “If we find it, we will report it,” he said. “It will be written down.”
But in October 2020, he said in a court hearing that he had spent five months reviewing jail deaths and interviewing deputies but had not kept any written notes. according to 11 Alivethe NBC affiliate in Atlanta.
“I obviously have my brainchild, what’s going on in my head,” he said. “That’s what I have.”
The appointment as special prosecutor in Fulton County has been lucrative for Mr. Wade. Records show the county paid him a total of $653,881 from November 2021 through last month — an average of about $25,000 per month. In this week’s legal filing, Ms. Merchant accused him of using some of that money to go on vacation with Ms. Willis, saying they “benefited significantly from this prosecution at the expense of taxpayers.”
On Tuesday, the head of the Georgia Republican Party, Josh McKoon, said all criminal proceedings in the Trump case should be stayed while the allegations against Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade are investigated.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Friday. The judge, Scott F. McAfee, scheduled the hearing before the allegations against Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade came to light.
The court papers containing the explosive allegations were filed by Ashleigh Merchant, an attorney representing Michael Roman, one of 19 people charged in Fulton County over their efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss. Mr. Roman is a former Trump campaign official.
The papers did not contain any evidence of the relationship between the two accusers, but said they had been seen “in a personal relationship” in Atlanta and that people close to both accusers had confirmed their relationship.
Mr. Wade was appointed by Ms. Willis on Nov. 1, 2021, to lead the investigation into efforts by Mr. Trump and others to overturn his election loss in Georgia. A day later, he filed for divorce from his wife of 24 years.
Many documents in Mr. Wade’s divorce case have been sealed. But available records show a judge charged him with contempt in August, saying he failed to provide certain information during the discovery process despite being ordered to do so. Mr. Wade’s wife, Jocelyn Wade, has asked the court to order Mr. Wade to give her money for legal and other costs while the divorce case continues. She has also accused him of withholding information about his finances.
This week, Ms. Wade’s lawyers subpoenaed Ms. Willis to answer questions under oath in the divorce case. It is unclear whether she will do so and what she will be asked to do.
Neither Ms. Willis nor Mr. Wade have responded to the allegations. A spokesperson for Ms. Willis said only that her office would respond in court. The allegations form the basis of a motion by Ms. Merchant to dismiss charges against her client, something legal experts say is unlikely.
Analysts said there was likely to be an investigation into the relationship between prosecutors and Mr. Wade’s appointment, and that the controversy could erode public confidence in prosecuting election interference.
Ms. Merchant argued in her motion that the case should be dismissed in part because Ms. Willis’ office was not authorized to appoint Mr. Wade as special prosecutor. But on Wednesday, Fulton County Attorney Soo Jo said through a spokeswoman that “no county approval is required in this state for a district attorney to appoint a special assistant district attorney in a specific case.”
In a 2022 interview, Ms. Willis said she chose Mr. Wade for the Trump investigation because he was a trusted friend and could tolerate the scrutiny and scrutiny that would come with the job. She said he served as her mentor when she briefly worked as chief judge for the city of South Fulton, a suburb of Atlanta, in 2019. Mr. Wade, she said, had been her teacher in a judge’s class.
Kitty Bennett research contributed.