Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis reimbursed Nathan Wade in cash for the trips they took together after their relationship began in early 2022, the special prosecutor testified on Thursday.
Wade, who took the stand under subpoena at the Fulton County misconduct hearing, said he would use his credit card to book travel because Willis would “limit her transactions” for safety reasons. He said Willis, whom he described as an “independent, strong woman,” would insist “she is going to pay her own way” by giving him cash or paying for things that made the cost of the trip equitable.
“Let’s take the Belize trip for example. That was a birthday trip to me, so I paid nothing for that trip,” Wade said about the March 2023 trip that he said Willis paid him back for entirely. “We are not keeping a ledger.”
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Regarding another trip to California in May 2023, Wade said, “Everything we did when we got into Napa, she paid for.”
The financial details of the vacations Wade and Willis took are at the crux of the hearing to decide whether the district attorney should be disqualified from overseeing the racketeering case against former president Donald Trump and his co-defendants.
In January, an attorney for former Trump aide and co-defendant Mike Roman argued that Willis misused her office and that the couple’s vacations were paid for by Wade’s taxpayer-funded paycheck. Roman's attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, has since released travel itineraries for vacations Wade took with Willis that he paid for, including a trip to Aruba in November 2022.
Wade and Willis have denied allegations of misconduct, stating that their relationship began after he was hired in November 2021 to investigate interference in the Georgia 2020 election.
During the Thursday hearing, Craig Gillen, an attorney for former Georgia Republican Party chairman David Shafer, grilled Wade on statements he made in his ongoing divorce case last year.
In the divorce interrogatory, Wade said he had not had sexual relations outside of his marriage.“Did you or did you not, by May the 30th, 2023, have had sexual relations with Miss Willis, yes or no?” Gillen asked.
“Yes,” Wade replied.
Later, Wade insisted there was a difference between when he believed his marriage ended and its pending legal conclusion. “I’m saying, during the course of my marriage, I did not have a sexual relationship with anyone,” Wade said.
“During the course of the marriage—the marriage was irretrievably broken in 2015,” Wade said. “The answer is still no.”
Gillen noted that his interrogatory statement pertained to relationships “from the date of marriage to the present.”
“Your answer to this interrogatory is false, is it not?” Gillen said. Wade asserted that his answer was correct.
A former longtime friend of Willis’, however, testified on Thursday that their relationship began at the end of 2019. Robin Yeartie said that she saw the pair “hugging, kissing, being affectionate” before November 2021, when Willis hired Wade. She said that the last time she saw Wade and Willis in 2022—when she was asked to resign from the district attorney’s office over a “situation” ending her friendship with Willis—the couple was still together.
Wade confirmed that he first met Willis at a 2019 conference, which spurred a friendship that included multiple calls about the law and their individual experiences on the bench. He said that during 2020 and part of 2021, he was battling cancer and was cautious about going out and dating amid COVID-19. “I had health on my mind,” he said.
During Willis' district attorney campaign, Wade said that their phone conversations briefly lapsed before they ramped back up after she was elected. A few months later, in early 2022, he said that their relationship had turned personal.
“2022 was the start of any intimate, sexual relationship with the district attorney,” he said.
Wade testified that he has never cohabitated with Willis or talked about their relationship in social settings.
“Our relationship wasn't secret, but we’re just private people,” he said.
Under questioning from Trump’s lawyer, Steve Sadow, Wade said his relationship with Willis ended in the summer of 2023. He said that the two are still friends and have remained “closer than ever because of these attacks.”
