The Fulton County district attorney’s office misrepresented facts about the personal relationship between Fani Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade, according to a court filing Friday by a lawyer for a defendant in the Donald Trump election interference case.
The new claims by attorney Ashleigh Merchant raise questions about the veracity of a recent motion filed by the DA’s office and a sworn affidavit from Wade. Merchant, who represents Michael Roman, is seeking to disqualify Willis and her team from the consequential case and get the charges against her client dropped. Six other codefendants, including Trump, have also alleged misconduct by Willis they say should result in her ouster.
Last week, the DA’s office fired back for the first time in a scathing motion that acknowledged Willis and Wade had a personal relationship but said they did nothing wrong.
But in Friday’s court filing, Merchant said that Wade’s onetime friend and lawyer can testify that Wade and Willis began a romantic relationship two years earlier than they acknowledged and before the DA had hired him to run the Trump investigation. And the filing alleged bank records show that Wade paid for additional trips the prosecutors took together, undercutting the assertion that the pair had roughly split costs for their travel.