Judge orders unsealing of divorce records involving Georgia special prosecutor in Trump case

A judge on Monday ordered court records to be made public in the divorce involving a special prosecutor hired in the election case against former President Trump and others and accused of having an affair with Fulton County Dist. Atty. Fani Willis.

The judge said records must be unsealed in the divorce case involving Nathan Wade, whom a defense attorney has alleged is in an inappropriate relationship with Willis. The judge put off a final decision on whether Willis will have to sit for questioning in the divorce case, but delayed her deposition that had been scheduled for Tuesday.

Willis has defended her hiring of Wade, who has little prosecutorial experience, and has not directly denied a romantic relationship.

Willis was served with the subpoena to sit for a deposition in the divorce case the day that defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant, who represents former Trump campaign staffer and onetime White House aide Michael Roman, filed a motion alleging the inappropriate relationship between Willis and Wade.

Willis has accused Wade’s estranged wife of trying to obstruct her criminal election interference case against Trump and others by seeking to question her in the couple’s divorce proceedings.

In a response filed Friday, a lawyer for Joycelyn Wade wrote that Nathan Wade has taken trips to San Francisco and Napa Valley, Florida, Belize, Panama and Australia and has taken Caribbean cruises since filing for divorce, and that Willis “was an intended travel partner for at least some of these trips as indicated by flights he purchased for her to accompany him.”

The filing includes credit card statements that show Wade — after he had been hired as special prosecutor — bought plane tickets in October 2022 for him and Willis to travel to Miami and bought tickets in April to San Francisco in their names.

Joycelyn Wade’s filing says she is seeking to question Willis about “her romantic affair” with Nathan Wade, saying there “appears to be no reasonable explanation for their travels apart from a romantic relationship.”

Trump and 18 allies were indicted in Georgia over their efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state, with prosecutors using a statute normally associated with mobsters to accuse the former president, lawyers and other aides of a “criminal enterprise” to keep him in power.