Former Fulton County special prosecutor Nathan Wade abruptly halted an interview with CNN that aired Wednesday after he was asked about the timeline of his romantic relationship with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is prosecuting former President Donald Trump and several of his allies for allegedly attempting to subvert Georgia’s election results in 2020.
In a pre-recorded interview, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Wade -- who stepped down from Willis’ case for reasons stemming from the pair’s relationship -- when the two first became romantically involved.
“Yeah, so, you know, we get into, there's been this effort to say that these exact dates are at issue …” Wade began to answer before apparently realizing someone on his team was signaling something to him.
“I’m getting signaled here,” he then said before a man, who CNN referred to as a media consultant, pulled Wade off to the side, where the two chatted with their backs to the camera. Wade’s microphone has been taken off.
Wade returned and was asked the question again.
“I believe that the public has, through the testimony and other interviews, the public has a clear snapshot that this is clearly just a distraction,” Wade said this time. “It is not a relevant issue in this case and I think that we should be focusing on more of the facts and the indictment of the case.”
Wade resigned from the case in Georgia following Fulton County Superior Judge Scott McAfee’s decision that Willis could only stay on if Wade stepped down. That decision came after it was revealed that the district attorney had a romantic relationship with Wade, whom she hired to help with the case. McAfee granted a request to seek an appeal of his ruling from the state Court of Appeals.
At the time, McAfee also wrote that “an odor of mendacity remains.” He said “reasonable questions” over whether Willis and Wade had testified truthfully about the timing of their relationship “further underpin the finding of an appearance of impropriety and the need to make proportional efforts to cure it.”
Even with Wade off the case, the pair’s relationship may still be important to the future of the proceedings as an appeals court considers the decision to allow Willis to stay on. Trump and other defendents in the case want Willis disqualified.
In a notable development last week, a Georgia appeals court decided to put the criminal trial proceedings against Trump on hold as it weighs the appeal from the former president and other defendents, increasing the chances the case is unlikely to go to trial before November’s election, where Trump looks likely to face President Joe Biden in a rematch.
On Thursday, Fulton County prosecutors asked the Georgia appeals court to dismiss the appeal.
A Fulton County grand jury in August indicted Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in a sprawling scheme to illegally try to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Four defendants have pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors, but Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty.
Wade said in the interview that he expects the trial to move forward even if Trump is reelected in November.
"I don’t believe that it … looks good to the rest of the world," Wade said. "But certainly I don’t think that there’s anything that would prevent that from happening."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
