Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis submitted falsehoods in a court filing in which she admitted to a “personal relationship” with prosecutor Nathan Wade, according to new arguments from one of former President Donald Trump‘s co-defendants in the Georgia 2020 election subversion case.
Mike Roman, a 2020 campaign operative to Trump who first surfaced the existence of the relationship, says he has a witness prepared to testify at a two-day evidentiary hearing this week who could disqualify Willis from handling the case. Roman is seeking to prove Willis and Wade’s relationship started before he was hired for the case in 2022, citing contradictory statements Wade submitted in two different sworn statements.
“Mr. Wade has filed other affidavits in his divorce case which contradict this affidavit,” Roman’s attorney Ashleigh Merchant said during a Monday hearing. Presiding Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee heard arguments from both sides on Monday over whether Willis and other witnesses should have to comply with subpoenas for their testimony about the allegations of impropriety.
In a filing in May 2023 for his divorce proceedings, Wade denied that he’d “had any relations with a person other than his spouse during the course of the marriage,” Merchant said. But in an affidavit Willis included in a filing for the Trump case last week, Wade acknowledged that his personal relationship with Willis began in 2022.
“So we’ve got two different declarations in two different courts — both sworn, both filed with the court — that say something completely different,” Merchant said during the hearing on Monday.
If the claims from Roman’s legal team are true, Wade may have committed perjury in the affidavit that he submitted to the court as part of Willis’s rebuttal of allegations that she and Wade improperly and financially benefited from working on the prosecution together.
McAfee decided Tuesday afternoon to schedule an additional day for the evidentiary hearing on Thursday, meaning the proceedings over the truth behind Roman’s claims will now extend into Friday.
Willis is hoping to avoid testifying during the hearing, which will be livestreamed on YouTube. Merchant told the judge Monday that Wade’s former law partner will testify, if permitted, that Willis and Wade’s personal relationship began before his hiring as special prosecutor in the Trump case.
Special prosecutor Anna Cross, who argued on behalf of the Fulton County DA’s office at the Monday hearing, accused the defense of making unfounded claims that were intended to draw negative media attention, arguing that Merchant’s accusations that Willis and Wade cohabitated were not true.
“The defense was not bringing new facts. The defense was not bringing you law. The defense was bringing you gossip,” Cross told the judge.
Although it’s unclear how McAfee will rule on subpoenas for Willis and other members of her office, McAfee on Monday did reject a subpoena request for Wade’s bank accounts and said any discussion about whether Wade lacks experience as a prosecutor would not be relevant to the Thursday hearing.
Additionally, the judge made a striking admission that “it’s possible” Roman’s allegation could result in Willis’s disqualification, saying that the evidentiary hearing must occur to establish the record on those core allegations.
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Willis has been paying the prosecutors, who are private sector lawyers, high-dollar hourly rates to work on the case. Roman alleged in a mid-January motion to dismiss the case against him that Willis was financially benefiting from her personal relationship with Wade by vacationing with him, dining with him, and otherwise spending time with him after he received taxpayer-funded payments from her office.
Despite initial reporting that Trump could attend the Thursday hearing in Fulton County, Trump’s Georgia attorney Steve Sadow told several outlets on Tuesday the former president is slated to attend a hearing in New York state court over the criminal hush money case against him brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
