Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has been subpoenaed to testify in a fellow prosecutor’s divorce proceedings, according to a court filing, in a move that could reveal more information about claims that Willis and the colleague engaged in an improper affair as they prosecute former President Donald Trump.
Mike Roman, one of Trump’s 14 remaining co-defendants in the sweeping racketeering indictment, filed a complaint Monday that Willis has engaged in personal relations with the special prosecutor she hired to lead the case, who has received hundreds of thousands of dollars for his work.
A process server said he arrived at Willis’s office in Atlanta on Monday with a subpoena seeking testimony in the Cobb County divorce case of Nathan Wade, a local attorney she hired to be special prosecutor in the Trump case, and his wife, Jocelyn Wade, according to court filings reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.
Roman, a former campaign aide during Trump’s 2020 election, claimed that Willis benefited personally from payments to Wade because of the pair’s relationship, alleging that she went on multiple cruises and trips that he paid for and that such an act amounts to fraud or an impermissible conflict of interest.
Roman’s lawyer, Ashleigh Merchant, said she reviewed a case file in Wade’s ongoing divorce proceeding at the Superior Court Clerk’s Office and created copies of specific documents. The case filed was later improperly sealed because no court hearing was held as required under law, according to a motion reviewed by the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Merchant has vowed to share the information she obtained and is asking a judge to unseal the case file.
Philip Holloway, an Atlanta-area attorney, told the Washington Examiner that if Roman’s allegations are true, it has a “significant potential to undermine … let’s just call it the structural integrity of the environment.”
“If there’s a conflict of interest with the district attorney herself due to nepotism related to a romantic relationship with one of these prosecutors, when you put all this together, it can undermine the structural underpinnings of the indictment,” Holloway said, adding it “could rise to the point of being a violation of due process for these defendants to have this investigation run this way.”
A spokesperson for Willis said Monday that the district attorney would respond to Roman’s complaint through court filings. Presiding Judge Scott McAfee could request a hearing over the matter, and Fulton County hearings are conducted publicly via livestream and in-person.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has attempted on multiple occasions to force Willis to comply with investigative committee efforts for information related to alleged coordination with the Justice Department. Willis has rejected and condemned those efforts, saying they are “flagrantly at odds with the Constitution.”
The complaint also included copies of expenses Wade had filed for his work with Willis’s office, with one expense report stating “Travel to Athens: Conf[erence] with White House Counsel.” The bill was dated May 23, 2022, and charged $2000 for eight hours of work, and Wade is paid $250 per hour.
A spokesperson for Jordan told the Washington Examiner his office is aware of the “damning allegations” against Willis and are “looking into all avenues as to what comes next.”
Trump has maintained his innocence in the case and has decried Willis’s indictment as a “witch hunt,” and has furthered that this criminal case and the three others against him are part of a ploy by President Joe Biden and Democrats to keep him from running for president in 2024.
