Nathan Wade, the former special prosecutor who resigned from Georgia’s election-interference case against Donald Trump, acknowledged in a new interview that the timing of his workplace romance with Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis was not “ideal,” but he added that he doesn’t believe that it caused “any damage” to the case.
Workplace romances are “American as apple pie,” Wade told ABC News in an interview that aired Monday on Good Morning America. “It happens to everyone. But it happened to the two of us.”
Willis appointed Wade to head up Georgia’s election-interference case against Trump and more than a dozen co-defendants in November 2021. In January, one of the defense lawyers on the case filed a motion calling for both of them to be disqualified for a conflict of interest tied to a then-unacknowledged romance between them.
Wade withdrew from the case in March after Fulton County Superior Court judge Scott McAfee gave Willis two options — either Wade step down or her office would have to withdraw from the case altogether.
Although he found “insufficient evidence” to prove a substantial conflict of interest, McAfee wrote that “an odor of mendacity remains” over the case. He also blasted Willis for exhibiting a “tremendous lapse in judgement.”
“[Willis is] an intelligent woman. I like to think that I’m above average intelligence as well,” Wade said during the interview. “It wasn’t lost upon the two of us that things could bleed over into the case and start to affect it. And so, we made the adult-like decision to do what we did.”
Wade also told ABC that he didn’t think he caused “any damage” to the case.
“I regret that that private matter became the focal point of this very important prosecution,” Wade said. “This is a very important case. I hate that my personal life has begun to overshadow the true issues in the case.”
“My private life has nothing to do with the merits of that prosecution,” Wade added.
Willis previously called the allegations that the affair created a conflict of interest “salacious” and “meritless,” and she claimed in February that the pair were not romantically involved when she appointed Wade to be special prosecutor. Trump’s co-defendants have argued that the affair undermined the prosecution’s legitimacy and that Wade was “part of the scheme [Willis] created intentionally in order to give benefits to her boyfriend.”
“I do not speak for the district attorney’s office,” Wade told ABC. “As a matter of fact, I’m certain that they would rather me not be having this exchange with you.”
Wade conceded that the timing of the romance wasn’t “ideal.” But, he added, “I don’t think that anything that occurred during the course of the relationship should cause question, as it would relate to the sufficiency of the indictment, as it would relate to any of the evidence that was uncovered and may or may not be presented at trial.”
Although there is no trial date scheduled for Trump and his co-defendants in Georgia, Wade said there will be a “day of reckoning” in front of a Fulton County jury.