Former Fulton County, Georgia, special prosecution Nathan Wade spoke publicly for the first time about his relationship with District Attorney Fani Willis in a television interview on Sunday. “Workplace romances are as American as apple pie,” he said, defining his romantic affair with Willis, which forced his resignation from her prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump and over a dozen others over allegations they interfered in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.
“I regret that that private matter became the focal point of this very important prosecution,” Wade said in the interview with ABC News’s Linsey Davis. He added: “This is a very important case. I hate that my personal life has begun to overshadow the true issues in the case.”
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee ruled in March that because of their workplace romance — and concerns of impropriety — either Willis or Wade would have to resign from the state RICO prosecution against Trump and others. Within hours of the decision, Wade submitted his resignation.
In the interview on Sunday, Wade admitted he should have considered breaking off the relationship, or at least putting it on pause because of the ethical problems it raised.
“I’ll concede that that could have been an approach,” Wade said, before defending his decision not to end or pause his romance with Willis. “But there again, when you are in the middle of it, these feelings are developing, and you get to a point where the feelings are, are so strong that, you know, you start to want to do things that really are none of the public’s concern.”
Both Willis and Wade face ongoing ethics complaints as well as additional state investigations into the nature of their relationship and whether it resulted in the abuse of public funds and other state resources.
show less
