Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has been subpoenaed to testify in a colleague’s divorce proceeding, according to a court filing, a development that could shed light on claims Willis and the colleague carried out an improper romantic relationship as they prosecuted former President Donald Trump and others.
In a court filing reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, a process server said he showed up at Willis’s office in Atlanta on Monday morning with a subpoena seeking her testimony in the Cobb County divorce case of Nathan Wade, a lawyer she hired as a special prosecutor in the Trump case, and his wife, Joycelyn Wade. The process server said he left the subpoena, filed by Joycelyn Wade’s lawyer, with Willis’s executive assistant.
A Willis spokesman declined to comment Tuesday about the subpoena, but he said previously that the prosecution would be responding in a court filing to the allegations of an improper relationship with Wade. Willis’s office hadn’t filed a response as of Tuesday afternoon.
Nathan Wade didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment left on the voicemail at his law office. A lawyer for Joycelyn Wade didn’t immediately provide a comment.
The subpoena was served Monday just hours before one of Trump’s co-defendants filed a motion laying out allegations of misconduct by Willis and Nathan Wade, including of an “improper, clandestine personal relationship during the pendency of this case.”
According to that motion, from a lawyer representing former Trump campaign official Mike Roman, the alleged relationship between Willis and Wade resulted in “in the special prosecutor, and, in turn, the district attorney, profiting significantly from this prosecution at the expense of the taxpayers.”
The motion, filed by Roman’s lawyer, Ashleigh Merchant, asked a judge to disqualify Willis from the case, also questioning the validity of the racketeering charges she brought against Trump and other defendants last year. Roman served as the director of Election Day operations for Trump’s 2020 campaign.
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