Fani Willis’ Nathan Wade Problem Won’t Go Away

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ case against Donald Trump risks being undermined by the actions of Nathan Wade, a former special prosecutor in the case.

Legal experts have criticized Wade, with whom Willis previously had a romantic relationship, for appearing in numerous interviews and discussing the district attorney’s case against the former president. Wade resigned from the case after his relationship with Willis came to light.

Willis is leading the case against Trump and 18 others accused of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, lost the state by almost 12,000 votes.

Wade was forced to resign in March when Judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing the case, ruled that while the relationship posed no conflict of interest, Willis could remain on the case only if Wade quit.

However, Willis remains under scrutiny, and earlier this month, an appeals court in Georgia indefinitely paused the case, pending a ruling on the defendants’ efforts to disqualify Willis from the investigation.

In recent weeks, Wade has discussed the case in interviews, including on The Daily Show segment “Chopping’ It Up With ‘Quon,” where he was asked suggestive questions about his relationship with Willis.

Some legal experts criticized Wade for participating in the interview, with Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University College of Law, writing on X, formerly Twitter, “Nathan Wade should be embarrassed.”

In another CNN interview earlier this month, Wade was asked about his relationship with Willis and said they were “great friends” who “speak regularly.” His team also intervened when he was asked about the timeline of their relationship.

Speaking to Newsweek, former federal prosecutor Gene Rossi called Wade “a self-aggrandizing attention seeker.”

“Nathan Wade has crossed the Rubicon from being a possibly forgettable very untruthful hearing witness in the eyes of the Court to being a self-aggrandizing attention seeker,” Rossi said. “President Abe Lincoln once said it best about the Wades of the world: ‘Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.'”

“I think it is an unnecessary distraction and disrespectful to both the process and the DA for Mr. Wade to be giving interviews at this time,” former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin said, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Matthew Mangino, a former district attorney in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, said Wade was “trying to cash in on his infamy.”

He told Newsweek: “The Nathan Wade interview tour is horrible. He is trying to cash in on his infamy, while the Fulton County DA’s office is pursuing a criminal prosecution of a former president.”

He continued: “Wade told CNN: ‘It was bad timing. But you don’t pick and choose when those things happen.’ Yes, you do. You’re working on one the most important criminal cases in American history, and you compromise your credibility by having an affair with your boss. Fani Willis is not without fault, and this won’t go away until Fani Willis goes away.”