In her absence, Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis’ office was represented at Friday’s hearing in the Trump RICO case by the very best and the very worst on her team of prosecutors.
The best is John Floyd, a private attorney who is recognized as the leading Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization expert in Georgia and the rest of the country. Willis was just an assistant district attorney in 2013 when he served as a pro bono prosecutor and guided her in a RICO indictment of 12 Atlanta public school teachers for conspiring to fake standardized test results. The case helped get Willis elected district attorney in 2020.
In 2023, Willis enlisted Floyd to help assemble an even bigger RICO case, the one charging Donald Trump and 18 others with a conspiracy involving 161 overt acts in 7 states to overturn the 2020 election. Floyd stood to Willis’ right when she announced the indictment that could put Trump in a Georgia prison beyond the protection of a presidential pardon. Floyd has not said whether he is serving pro bono in this as well, but if not that, that would break with a precedent set by the other instances where he assisted RICO prosecution.
But to Willis’ left at the big announcement stood her very worst hire, Nathan Wade. She pays this private attorney $250 an hour to serve as a special prosecutor on the Trump case. Wade does not appear to have ever tried a felony case before this one, among the biggest in American history.
The picture of Willis standing with Floyd and Wade was an image of her standing with one attorney who helped make her and another who may be her undoing.
Willis has said she got to know Wade in 2019, after she was appointed a municipal judge, handling misdemeanors and minor violations in suburban South Fulton. Wade was serving in the same capacity in Marietta and had become secretary of the Georgia Council of Municipal Court Judges. He mentored Willis as part of a program for those new to the bench.
Not long afterwards, Wade stepped down and established an unremarkable private practice that included personal injury and family law. Willis left when she was elected district attorney, the same year that Trump suffered the defeat he still refuses to accept.
Willis subsequently said she hired Wade for the Trump case because she wanted somebody trustworthy who would be able to soldier through the heat and abuse that was sure to accompany the case. She almost certainly did not anticipate the intensity of the scrutiny that was soon to come and continue.
Special prosecutors John Floyd and Nathan Wade, and assistant district attorney Donald Wakeford listen to the judge during a motions hearing for former U.S. President Donald Trump's election interference case at the Lewis R. Slaton Courthouse on January 12, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia.
An attorney for Trump co-defendant Michael Roman filed a motion this week charging that Willis hired Wade because they are in “an improper relationship.” Roman’s attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, further charged that Wade and Willis were perpetrating what amounted to a RICO scheme to enrich themselves with the $700,000 the district attorney’s office has paid him so far.
The motion includes invoices to document the payments and notes that Wade filed for divorce from his wife of 26 years one day after he was hired by Willis. But there is nothing to substantiate that Willis and Wade are anything but friends. And, along with failing to note that $250 an hour would be considered exorbitant for a private attorney, the motion falsely contends that Willis needed the approval of the Fulton County Commission to hire Wade.
“Here are the facts, the district attorney has the right and the authority to hire a special prosecutor,” board chair Robb Pitts told The Daily Beast on Wednesday.
Regarding the allegations of an affair, he added, “If these allegations are correct, it can appear to be a little sloppy on her part. But no, she did not need permission of the board.”
Willis’ office said she would respond to the allegations “through appropriate court filings.” But the very fact that she would hire somebody so inexperienced and unqualified for a case involving an alleged assault on democracy itself answered a question posed on July 25 by Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney. He disqualified Willis from investigating then-Georgia State Sen. Burt Jones as a possible fraudulent elector for Trump. Burt was running for lieutenant governor and it turned out Willis had hosted a fundraiser for his opponent.
“I use that phrase, ‘What were you thinking?’” McBurney said, adding, ”The optics are horrific.”
At the time, it appeared Wills may have just suffered a temporary lapse of judgment. Now, it seems she suffers from a serious character flaw. And the answer regarding both messes seems to be that she was not thinking at all.
Few optics could be worse than the photo of Wade driving a $100,000 car when his estranged wife Joycelyn Wade is reported to have said in court papers that she is a full-time mom in “dire need of financial support” who has “no access to marital funds.”
In courtroom 5A in Fulton County Superior Court on Friday afternoon, Wade sat silent at the center of the prosecution table as Floyd rose from a seat at the end. Floyd delivered firm, clear-headed arguments countering challenges to the indictment offered by defense briefs. The defense was contending that “football stadiums” would be filled with detainees if everyday involved were arrested.
“The enterprise in this case does not consist of thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of people,” Floyd said. “It does not consist of everybody who voted for Donald Trump. It does not consist of everybody who supported Donald Trump or everybody who ever asked a question about the relevant election in 2020. We don’t say that.”
He added, “They don’t get to rewrite our indictment for us. Okay?”
Among other things, he tore apart a defense contention that trying to hijack an election is just a form of “civil disobedience.” He also challenged a suggestion that this RICO case did not involve economic gain.
“That carries with it a lot of things,” he said. “A very large salary, benefits, retirement benefits that are very substantial, the most prestigious residence in the world, and the most prestigious transportation in the world.”
Any defendants watching the hearing on Zoom—and Rudi Giuliani’s attorney said he might have been among them—would have had reason to be discouraged by the time Floyd ended his masterful performance and sat down.
But any defendant well-versed in Wade’s background would have had cause to feel better during a discovery motion concerning a meeting he had with the Jan 6. Committee. The meeting had come to light as a result of a Wade pay voucher in Merchant’s motion. But the issue at hand was only whether the prosecution had turned over notes to the defense from the huddle.
“Judge, everything that was shared was released publicly through the Jan. 6 committee,” Wade said. “There were no notes taken that we would need to turn over.”
“Just to be clear, you're not claiming you didn't take notes, as I would think most lawyers would, but the idea is that you have notes and you believe those are work product,” McAfee said
“Yes,” Wade replied.
As was reported three years ago by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and again this week by The New York Times, Wade failed to make good on a pledge to issue a written report when he was retained in 2020 to examine deaths in the Cobb County jail. A local TV station went to court seeking to review it, and Wade ended up admitting he had not even taken notes during the five-month investigation.
“I have obviously my brainchild, what’s going on in my mind about it,” Wade testified back then. “That’s what I have.”
At least Wade seemed to jot down a few notes during Friday’s hearing. He did not raise his pen and sat blank-faced when Trump’s attorney, Steven Sadow, made reference to Merchant’s motion alleging that Willis hired her married boyfriend who then parties with the paychecks.
“There have been allegations of fact made, which deal directly with our opposition counsel,” Sadow said via Zoom.
But then came the surprise of the day; Trump’s lawyer showed actual restraint.
“Suffice it to say that they are salacious and scandalous in nature and I don't have a factual background that I can state to the court supports that at this point,” Sadow said. “I'm leery of moving to adopt motions that make such allegations without having a better understanding or substantiation.”
McAfee said he would schedule a hearing after Willis has had a chance to reply. He figured it would be mid-February at the earliest.
“So I would imagine if there’s going to be a response it would be before that time,” he said.
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