Fani Willis laid groundwork for prosecuting Trump before taking office, ex-prosecutor Wade reveals

House Judiciary Committee Jim Jordan on Monday released the transcript of closed-door testimony from Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor hired by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to help manage her office's Donald Trump election interference case before coming under scrutiny for his romantic-financial relationship with Willis. 

Wade testified that Willis was planning to prosecute Trump and began discussing a search committee to find a special prosecutor to investigate the former president prior to assuming office in January 2021. 

The former special prosecutor was also confronted with his own records showing that he met with White House officials, for eight hours on one occasion, though he told investigators he could not recall the details of the meetings. 

Wade served on that search committee, which was instated on day one of Willis’ term in January 2021. After an unsuccessful search, Wade was ultimately invited to assume the role himself, which he claimed he reluctantly accepted. 

“And so the search committee, you said that began when DA Willis took office on January 1, 2021. Is that correct?” investigators asked. 

“Yes,” Wade replied. 

“And was there outreach to you to be part of the search committee prior to January 1, 2021?”

“Absolutely,” he confirmed, saying the outreach began “Sometime after the election, but prior to her taking office.”

The transcript of Wade's deposition Tuesday was released by Jordan's committee a week after the interview. The GOP-led committee subpoenaed Wade as part of an investigation into his relationship with Willis. Last year, Willis indicted Trump and 18 codefendants in Georgia over their alleged efforts to challenge the 2020 election results in the state.

Wade resigned from the case in March after a Georgia judge made his stepping aside a condition of allowing Willis to remain on the case after evidence of an improper financial and romantic relationship emerged between them. 

You can read the transcript below: 

Wade also failed to recall key details about meetings with White House officials, despite recording them in his invoices to Willis’ office. According to the transcript, Wade billed Willis' office for an eight hour meeting with White House lawyers. These meetings were reported by Just the News after court documents filed by a Trump codefendant showed Wade recorded an entry for a meeting with the White House Counsel’s office in Athens, Georgia in May 2022. 

Though Wade testified that he did not remember the meeting, he told congressional investigators that “the invoice says travel to Athens. So that means to me that I traveled to Athens.” 

The invoices provided in the suit show at least one more meeting with Biden White House staff, on November 2022, that appears to have taken place in Washington, D.C., though there is no record of a visit by Wade in the White House visitor logs. 

Willis last week attempted unsuccessfully to block Wade from testifying to the committee on the grounds that it could "improperly divulge confidential information" about her investigation of the former president.