Fulton County DA Fani Willis' alleged paramour paid for plane tickets in her name, bank statements suggest
Joycelyn Wade, the estranged wife of Georgia special prosecutor Nathan Wade, alleges her husband bought plane tickets for his paramour, Fulton County DA Fani Willis.
Georgia special prosecutor Nathan Wade, the alleged paramour of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, bought plane tickets in her name, according to a court filing.
Attorneys for Wade's estranged wife, Joycelyn Wade, filed court documents on Friday that included 2022 bank statements showing purchases of flights to Miami and San Francisco.
The statements, which were obtained by Fox News, show that Wade bought round-trip tickets for himself and Willis to Miami in October 2022, which also included a third ticket for someone named Clara Bowman on the same day from Houston to Miami. Another round-trip ticket to San Francisco for Wade and Willis was purchased in April 2023, documents show.
Joycelyn Wade's attorneys, who seek to have Willis deposed for her divorce from Nathan Wade, argued that there "appears to be no reasonable explanation for their travels apart from a romantic relationship."
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Willis is caught in a political firestorm over allegations that she engaged in an improper relationship with Nathan Wade, whom she hired to lead the prosecution of former President Donald Trump and 18 others for their alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.
Willis has been subpoenaed to give a pretrial deposition in the divorce case on January 23, but in a Thursday court filing, she argued that the subpoena should be quashed. Her attorney, Cinque Axam, has argued that Joycelyn Wade has "conspired with interested parties in the criminal Election Interference Case to use the civil discovery process to annoy, embarrass, and oppress District Attorney Willis."
Axam accused Joycelyn Wade of "obstructing and interfering" with the district attorney's ongoing case against Trump.
In their response on Friday, Wade's attorneys denied that she is using the deposition to "harass" Willis, but "rather to seek pertinent information from her husband’s paramour regarding her relationship with Plaintiff and the extension to the Plaintiff’s financial involvement in the same."
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While the bank records show that Nathan Wade purchased plane tickets for himself and Willis, they do not provide direct evidence of an affair — although Willis has not directly denied a romantic relationship.
The affair allegations surfaced last week when Trump codefendant Michael Roman’s lawyer accused Willis and Nathan Wade of engaging in an improper relationship and mishandling public money in a separate court filing. Roman’s lawyer, Ashleigh Merchant, did not provide evidence of the alleged relationship between Willis and Wade but pointed to proof in Wade’s divorce case.
Merchant alleges that Willis' purported relationship with Wade created a conflict of interest and that she benefited financially from the relationship in the form of lavish vacations the two took using funds his law firm had received for working on the case.
County records show that Wade has been paid nearly $654,000 in legal fees since January 2022, an amount authorized by the district attorney, or Willis in this case.
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Wade's bank statements show more purchases, including two $1,387 and $1,284 payments for a Royal Caribbean cruise, which were made on the same day, October 4, 2022, that Wade bought the airline ticket to Miami in Willis' name. Other expenses between October 2022 and May 2023 were for Atlanta tour operator Vacation Express, the Hyatt Regency Aruba Resort and the Norwegian Cruise Line, and for the DoubleTree by Hilton Napa Valley – American Canyon.
Joycelyn Wade claimed that the bank statements show that "Ms. Willis was an intended travel partner for at least some of these trips as indicated by flights he purchased for her to accompany him."
"It is regrettable that Ms. Willis has filed such an inflammatory Motion, which has left Defendant with no other choice than to respond forcefully and with supporting evidence in a case that is very personal in nature," the filing states.
Fani Willis and Nathan Wade did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Fox News' Samantha Daigle; Fox News Digital's Anders Hagstrom, Brian Flood and Brandon Gillespie; and The Associated Press contributed to this report.