Bank records show Fulton County DA Fani Willis traveled with her top prosecutor, filing says
Willis is accused of having an improper relationship with staffer Nathan Wade.
The credit card statements of Fulton County special prosecutor Nathan Wade appear to show he paid for multiple trips for him and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, according to copies of the statements included in a new filing submitted by Wade's wife as part their divorce proceedings.
The filings, made Friday, could support allegations made by a defendant in Willis' Georgia election interference case that Willis engaged in an improper relationship with Wade that resulted in financial gain for both of them.
The allegations were made in a court filing earlier this month by Trump co-defendant Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign staffer, who is seeking to dismiss the indictment against him and disqualify Willis from the case on the grounds that she potentially committed "an act to defraud the public of honest services" based on her "intentional failure" to disclose the alleged relationship with Wade that she allegedly "personally benefitted from."
Credit card statements of Wade's included in Friday's filing show Willis' name next to trips booked to San Francisco and Miami. The trips appear to be from Wade's statements from the fall of 2022 and the spring of 2023, after he had been hired by Willis as a prosecutor on the election interference case.
The filing comes a day after Willis asked the judge in Wade's divorce case to quash a subpoena she was served as part of that case last week, arguing her deposition in the matter would be "outside the scope of discovery" and amounts to an attempt to "harass" her. Friday's filing from Wade's wife urged the judge not to quash the subpoena, saying Willis "has information and knowledge directly relevant to alleged conduct" of Wade.
Former President Trump, responding on social media, accused Willis and Wade of bringing the charges against him "to enrich themselves" and called on his case to be "totally and completely dismissed."
The Cobb County judge overseeing the divorce case has set a hearing for Monday to hear arguments on Willis' efforts to quash the subpoena. The judge is also scheduled to hear arguments from Ashleigh Merchant, the attorney for Roman who first filed the allegations, who is now seeking to unseal the divorce case.
The Fulton County judge overseeing the election interference case on Thursday set a hearing date of Feb. 15 to hear evidence over Roman's allegations. The DA's office was ordered to respond to the allegations in court by Feb. 2.
Roman's attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
A spokesperson from the district attorney's office repeated a previous statement, saying they "will respond in court."
Also Friday, a member of Fulton County's board of commissioners sent Willis a letter seeking more information on the issue. Bob Ellis, the chairman of the commissioners' audit committee, told ABC News that, while it was not yet an investigation, he would be "pursuing as full of an investigation as is permitted by Fulton County government."
"Separate from any potential inquiry by the State of Georgia, this situation requires confirmation of whether County funds provided for your operation of your office and its prosecutorial function were used in an appropriate manner, and whether any payments of County funds to Mr. Wade were converted to your personal gain in the form of subsidized travel or other gifts," the letter from Ellis, a Republican, said.
The letter asks for Willis to provide a host of information, including the contracts and payments her office made to special prosecutors dating back to January 2021, and the methods the office used of determining hourly rates of special prosecutors.
Speaking on Sunday at the Big Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day service, Willis appeared to address the allegations for the first time, calling herself a "flawed” and "imperfect" person and defending Wade as a "great friend and a great lawyer." She did not deny the allegations, and suggested they were motivated by race.
Roman, Trump and 17 others pleaded not guilty in August to all charges in a sweeping racketeering indictment for alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia. Four co-defendants subsequently took plea deals in exchange for agreeing to testify against other defendants.
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