Nathan Wade, the Georgia lawyer tapped to prosecute former President Donald Trump by his onetime lover, Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis, had extensive communications with the Biden-Harris White House, new records show.
Wade billed the Fulton County office for hours of meetings with the White House, the congressional January 6 committee, and other D.C. officials, according to records obtained by the House Judiciary Committee.
On Monday the committee released a transcript of an interview with Wade, which was compelled by subpoena, in which he said that Willis was preparing to prosecute Trump even before she took office, and that she put Wade on a “search committee” to find a prosecutor, which ultimately chose him for the job.
On May 23, 2022, Wade billed the Fulton office for eight hours of travel and “Conf with White House Counsel.” Wade said he could not remember who from the White House was involved, or even where the meeting took place. On November 18, 2022, he billed eight hours for “Interview with DC/White House,” but under oath claimed he didn’t remember the meeting and couldn’t even say whether it was online or in-person. Between September 7 and September 9, 2022, Wade billed $6,000 to taxpayers for “Witness Interviews; conf call DC; team meeting,” but couldn’t remember what the D.C. meeting entailed.
Q: Did anyone from the White House travel to Georgia to meet with you?
A: That’s a tough question because I don’t know who — I don’t know who is in the White House. …
Q: Do you have any recollection of what you were referring to or who you were referring to when you said interview with D.C./White House?
A: I don’t. …
Q: Do you recall if you traveled to D.C. for this meeting?
A: I don’t recall.
Q: Do you recall if anyone traveled to you in Georgia for this interview?
A: I don’t recall.
Q: Do you recall if you reached out to schedule this interview or if someone from the White House reached out to you to schedule the interview?
A: I don’t recall.
On April 25, 2023, he spent eight hours on “Zoom conf with investigators in other jurisdictions,” but could not remember anything about it. In all, Wade said he couldn’t remember details 58 times. Wade’s memory was famously faulty in Georgia court as witnesses tried to explain the timeline of Willis hiring her secret boyfriend without contradicting each other.
In the congressional interview, the evasive answers continued. Wade billed 24 hours in April 2022 for “Team meeting; conf with Jan 6th; research legal issues to prep [interview]” and eight hours on November 16, 2022 for “Jan 6 meeting and Atty conf.” Wade denied meeting with any January 6 Committee members or staff, but his questioners pointed out that that Politico had reported that “Willis’ team met with committee staff in Washington in April 2022. Some of Willis’ top prosecutors attended, including Wade.” Wade then acknowledged meeting with “individuals associated with the January 6th Committee” — a Democrat-run House committee digging up dirt on Trump — several times, saying they were lawyers whose names he could not remember, and that he did not know who the lawyers’ client was.
In Georgia, where proceedings brought by a Trump co-defendant argued that the prosecution was corrupt, Wade provided written answers under oath saying he did not have a relationship with Willis during his marriage to another woman, before admitting on the witness stand that he did. Willis and Wade testified under oath that their relationship didn’t begin until 2022, after Willis hired him, but multiple witnesses contradicted that, and cell phone data showed they exchanged 12,000 texts in 2021. The judge ultimately ruled that either Willis or Wade must be removed from the Trump prosecution to avoid misconduct, and Wade departed.
Wade’s congressional testimony highlights questions about whether Willis gave him a special prosecutor job knowing he lacked the relevant experience, in order to benefit him as a lover. Though he said the prosecution of a former president was “unlike anything that has ever happened in American history,” Wade acknowledged to Congress that he had never even worked for a district attorney’s office before.
He also said he had never worked on a case involving RICO before spearheading the one that used the law against a former president, so he took classes to learn how after taking the job. “It’s a very complicated legal concept, but the dubbed godfather of RICO, the gentleman who wrote the book… spent hours and hours teaching me RICO, if you will,” he said.
U.S. Marshalls attempting to serve Wade with a subpoena could not locate him for days. Wade claimed he had turned his phone off because he was preparing for a trial, and also because he was on pain medication from hurting his ankle playing basketball.
At the deposition, Wade was represented by two lawyers including former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes (D). They lawyers said Wade might refuse to answer questions and suggested that there was nothing the House could do about it because contempt proceedings would take place in D.C., whose residents voted 93% against Trump:
Barnes: Sure. Which I’d be entitled to a jury trial in D.C. And so —
Staff: Well, contempt in the House context.
Barnes: You can’t enforce anything. Do you have a jail?
Staff: We’re not going to put anyone in jail over this. I mean, the House does have inherent contempt —
Barnes: The only power you have is by criminal contempt, and you’re entitled to a jury trial on a criminal contempt.
Wade said that he would not discuss specifics of his prosecution in part because of death threats he said he had received.
A: I was concerned for my own safety to the extent to where I had to wear a bulletproof vest in public. I’m a licensed gun owner. I had to carry a weapon for my own protection. Somehow my license tag on my car got leaked, and then there were people following me.
Q: Is it possible for you to quantify the number of death threats that you’ve received, or is it a volume that’s so big that you couldn’t even keep track?
A: Oh, my God. I couldn’t even — I couldn’t begin to quantify it. I have no clue how many. A lot.
Willis’s father previously testified in court that after Willis was elected in the majority-black county, a racist mob gathered around her house at 5 a.m. and shouted the n-word, and someone else painted the n-word on Willis’ home. Public records requests from The Daily Wire found no records to support that.
Wade declined to discuss with Congress how his relationship with Willis affected their work, saying “So now I’m getting confused because I didn’t — I didn’t think I was coming here to answer questions about my personal life.”
