ATLANTA – Nathan Wade is an outside special prosecutor appointed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to oversee him criminal racketeering case According to credit card statements included in a court filing obtained by NBC News on Friday, he bought plane tickets for the DA to travel together against Donald Trump.
Michael Roman, the defendant in the Trump case, has previously spoken charges of misconduct against the couple, “they had an illegal, secret personal relationship while this case was in progress, and as a result, the special prosecutor and, in turn, the district prosecutor, gained a lot of profit from this criminal prosecution. taxpayers.”
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee scheduled a hearing On allegations of February 15.
Credit card statements showing Wade purchased tickets for himself and Willis to travel to San Francisco and Miami in 2022 and 2023 were included in a filing filed by Wade’s estranged wife, Joycelyn Wade, in an ongoing divorce case in Cobb County, Georgia. .
The DA’s office declined to comment on the credit card statements.
In Thursday’s filing, Willis called Joycelyn Wade “to annoy” to call him to a deposition in the divorce case to “damage him and his professional reputation”. Willis said his wife “conspired with interested parties in the Criminal Election Interference Case to use the civil investigative process to annoy, embarrass and pressure District Attorney Willis.”
The DA said the Wades have been separated since 2021 and agreed in court filings that their marriage was “irretrievably broken” and that he “does not have any information that may be relevant to the granting or denial of a divorce.”
Joycelyn Wade painted a different picture in her first-reported document Atlanta Journal-Constitutionand that Willis had knowledge of her husband’s finances.
She said her husband filed for divorce on Nov. 2, 2021 — the day after Willian appointed her special prosecutor. Joycelyn Wade said she was kept in the dark about the appointment, which resulted in “significant income” that was not private to her husband.
The lawsuit says Nathan Wade left her “with very little financial support while spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on a very lavish lifestyle.”
“After Plaintiff filed for divorce, he took trips to San Francisco and Napa Valley, Florida, and even went on Caribbean cruises, Belize, another trip to Panama, and even a trip to Australia last month. The evidence is clear that Ms. Willis accompanied him. was a designated travel partner for at least some of these trips, as indicated by the flights he took for
According to the statements, the price of one of the tickets is about $900, and the other is about $500.
Roman’s filing suggested that Wade and Willis were in a “romantic relationship,” a sentiment echoed by Joycelyn Wade’s filing.
“Ms. Willis seeks to relieve Ms. Willis of her duty to establish the details of her romantic relationship with the respective claimant because there is no reasonable explanation for their travels other than a romantic relationship,” the filing states.
“Contrary to Mrs. Willis’s belief, Defendant is not using the deposition to harass her, but is using her husband’s friends to obtain relevant information regarding her relationship with Plaintiff and the extent of Plaintiff’s financial involvement in it. These responses include equitable division of marital property, husband – the destruction of the wife’s property and the Plaintiff’s ability to provide spousal support,” he added.
A Cobb County judge has set an emergency hearing for 11:30 a.m. Monday to hear arguments on Willis’ effort to block the subpoena and whether the divorce records in the case should be unsealed.
Invoices attached to Roman’s court filing last week show that Wade was paid $250 an hour for his work on the case and that his law firm has been paid at least $550,000 for his widespread work since 2022. 19–the defendant’s case.
Roman using the alleged relationship, Willis, Nathan Wade and the DA’s office should be disbarred from prosecuting the case and the criminal charges against him should be dismissed. He argued that Willis bypassed due process in appointing Wade, thereby tainting the entire case.
“Instead of handling this case in his own office, as he could have done,” Willis “chose to hire a private special prosecutor to preside over the case” and, in doing so, “used the prosecutor’s office to pay his accomplice” large sums of money, the filing says.
Willis has yet to respond to the allegations, and his office has said it will file a lawsuit. McAfee ordered his office to respond to Roman’s request by February 2.
Attorneys for Roman and Joycelyn Wade did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Four defendants have pleaded guilty in the election case, and others, including Roman and Trump he begged not guilty.
Blayne Alexander and Charlie Gile reported from Atlanta, and Dareh Gregorian reported from New York.