A Georgia judge has ordered the divorce case of the special prosecutor in the Donald Trump election interference case unsealed amid allegations that he had a romance with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
But Superior Court Judge Henry Thompson said he is not ready to rule on whether Willis will have to testify in the matrimonial battle between Nathan Wade and his estranged wife, Joycelyn Wade. Thompson will make his decision after Nathan Wade is deposed on Tuesday.
“[Willis] is trying to hide under the shield of her position,” Andrea Hastings, an attorney for Joycelyn Wade, argued on Monday on behalf of her motion to subpoena Willis.
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“Whatever her job is has nothing to do with whether or not she should have to sit for this deposition,” Hastings added, calling Willis an “alleged paramour of my client’s husband.”
“I have questions and she needs to answer them.”
The scandal unfolded earlier this month, after Trump aide Mike Roman’s defense attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, accused Willis of having an “improper” relationship with Wade, who filed for divorce the day after he was hired two years ago to investigate whether Trump and his allies interfered with the 2020 election in Georgia.
The vague allegations surfaced as Joycelyn Wade’s lawyers attempted to subpoena Willis in the divorce matter. Willis tried to quash the subpoena and accused the estranged wife of trying to obstruct the Trump case.
Hastings argued on Monday that Willis “knows the cause of the separation” between her client and her estranged husband and that she is hindering access to information.
“I want to know about how he’s been spending his money,” Hasting said. “I have reasons to believe he’s spending it on another woman. That’s my client’s money. And I want to ask questions about that.”
Hastings’ argument alluded to her motion on Friday that contained Wade’s credit card statement, which showed Nathan Wade bought airline flights for himself and Willis to Aruba and other places between 2022 and 2023.
The unsealed divorce docket, which has some still-sealed filings that “contain sensitive data,” airs new details of the protracted divorce proceedings between the Wades, who married in 1997. Joycelyn Wade’s lawyers accused Nathan of giving vague reponses about his finances, “willfully” failing to turn over documents about his income, and not disclosing his appointment as the anti-corruption special prosecutor for the Trump case.
In a December filing, Joycelyn Wade’s lawyers allege that he has earned almost $700,000 since May 2022 but has provided “nearly nothing” to his wife. They say Nathan Wade historically deposited $700 into Joycelyn’s bank account, biweekly, for living expenses.
“However, since the divorce has been filed, [Nathan Wade], despite the clear inequity in financial circumstances between the parties, continuously draws from this account for his own personal and household expenses, leaving it routinely overdrawn,” the filing said.
Willis and Wade have not formally responded to the allegations amid calls for their removal from the Trump case. After the allegations were initially leveled, the judge presiding over the Georgia racketeering case against Trump and some of his allies set a Feb. 15 hearing date to review the misconduct claims.
On Sunday, Merchant issued a statement stating that the records contain evidence about Willis and Wade’s personal relationship and arguing that the charges against Roman, a former Trump campaign operative, should be dropped.
Willis’ lawyer, Cinque Axam, countered in a court filing that her testimony in the divorce is not relevant and claimed that the subpoena is a political move—“an attempt to harass and damage” the district attorney’s professional reputation and conspire “with the case’s critics to “use the civil discovery process to annoy, embarrass, and oppress” her.
“Because the parties agree that the marriage is irretrievably broken and the concept of fault is not at issue, there is no information that District Attorney Willis could provide that might prove relevant to granting or denying the divorce,” Axam argued.
On Monday, Axam argued that Willis’ testimony would be irrelevant because the district attorney does not have any accounts with Wade and does not know how he spends his money.
“The knowledge she may or may not have is not unique; if it’s the case that Willis had an affair with Wade as alleged, then he has that information.”
