The Fulton County District Attorney’s office paid Nathan Wade, a private attorney hired by Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis to assist in prosecuting former President Donald Trump and his co-defendants, $4,000 for two eight-hour meetings with White House officials in 2022.
Before Trump’s August 14, 2023, indictment in Georgia for alleged election meddling, the meetings occurred following Wade’s hiring. Based on Wade’s invoices, he attended a meeting at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and an event in Georgia with White House attorneys. Wade’s conversations with White House representatives are not well known.
The invoices show that Wade billed eight hours of work, at a $250 hourly rate, for a May 23, 2022, event listed as “Travel to Athens; Conf with White House Counsel.” On November 18, 2022, Wade charged the county another $2,000 for an “interview with DC/White House.” The services rendered by Wade in conjunction with the case seemingly included attending an event with White House counsel in Georgia and a meeting at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Michael Roman, a former Trump 2020 campaign official, filed a court document alleging that Willis should be disqualified from the case. The charges against him were dropped because of her alleged “improper, clandestine personal relationship” with Wade. Roman’s filing claims that “sources close to both the special prosecutor and the district attorney” have confirmed that Willis and Wade had an ongoing fling and that Wade filed for divorce in Cobb County, Ga., “a day after his first contract with Willis commenced” in November 2021. On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Willis had been subpoenaed to testify in Wade’s divorce proceedings.
Roman’s motion argues that Willis’ failure to disclose her alleged relationship with Wade while paying him for his work on the Trump case could amount to honest services fraud as well as “a predicate act which could result in a RICO charge against both the district attorney and the special prosecutor.” Trump and Roman were hit with racketeering charges in Willis’ case against them and 17 other co-defendants under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Roman served as the Trump re-election campaign’s director of Election Day operations in 2020.
Last September, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) demanded that Willis detail any contact her office has had with federal officials about her prosecution of Trump, a request the DA refused to comply with. Jordan, a staunch defender of Trump, argued that Willis’ case could be “designed to interfere with the 2024 presidential election,” in which the 77-year-old is the Republican front-runner against President Biden. In a chiding response to Jordan, Willis accused the committee chairman of lacking “a basic understanding of the law” and attempting to “intrude upon and interfere with an active criminal case.”
Wade, the Fulton County DA’s Office, and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
