The accusation that Fani Willis’s former special prosecutor and ex-boyfriend, Nathan Wade, is engaging in contempt of court in his increasingly ugly divorce could complicate the efforts of the Fulton County district attorney to dodge disqualification by pulling her back into a bitter divorce case that is far from finalized. 

A new divorce filing from Joycelyn Wade, Mr. Wade’s wife of 26 years, accuses him of failing to pay $4,400 in her medical bills as well as a “sudden cessation of support” for their children. She claims that she “urgently requires medical procedures, namely an endoscopy, colonoscopy, and ultrasound due to severe physical symptoms.”

The request that Mr. Wade be held in contempt hit the divorce docket as the Georgia Court of Appeals is considering another request, this one from President Trump and a number of his co-defendants. They want that review tribunal to overturn Judge Scott McAfee’s ruling allowing Ms. Willis to stay on the case if Mr. Wade resigned as its special prosecutor. 

Mrs. Wade alleges that Mr. Wade ceased making his court-mandated alimony payments on January 30 and that he stepped aside from Ms. Willis’s racketeering case on March 15. Mr. Wade received more than $650,000 in payments from Ms. Willis’s office. He was appointed special prosecutor in November 2022. 

January 30 is also the date that the Wades reached a temporary divorce settlement, an accord signed off on by Judge Henry Thompson of Cobb County Superior Court. That agreement meant that Ms. Willis avoided testifying in the dispute. She had been subpoenaed by attorneys for Mrs. Wade, who likely determined that the relationship between the two attorneys was germane to the breakdown of the marriage.

Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade both insisted, under oath, that their relationship did not become intimate until after Mr. Wade had separated, an assertion contradicted by testimony from Ms. Willis’s estranged friend and former housemate, Robin Yeartie, who said she saw the couple “being affectionate” in November 2021.

An attorney for Mrs. Wade, Andrea Hastings, issued a statement at the time of the understanding that “all of the issues we pled for temporary support and attorneys fees have been resolved by this agreement,” but that the “case is not resolved on a final basis.” It now appears as if some of those understandings have unraveled, raising the possibility that Mrs. Wade could once again be summoned to testify under oath.

Divorce filings in Georgia are usually public, though much of Wade v. Wade is under seal, a status that must be requested from the presiding judge. Mrs. Wade here alleges that Mr. Wade reneged on promises to pay tuition and rent for their children. Mr. Wade’s finances, though, are at the center of the effort by Mr. Trump and his co-defendants to disqualify Ms. Willis from the racketeering case she brought.

The effort has already resulted in Mr. Wade’s resignation. That was the consequence of an order from Judge McAfee that ruled that either Ms. Willis or Mr. Wade could prosecute the case, but not both. He found that their relationship had an “odor of mendacity” and that Ms. Willis exhibited, in her handling of the affair, a “tremendous lapse in judgment.”

The defendants allege not only a “significant appearance of impropriety,” as Judge McAfee found, but also that the entanglement between the couple amounted to an actual conflict of interest. The judge was not willing to go that far, though he reminded Ms. Willis that “every newly minted prosecutor should be instilled with the notion that she seeks justice over convictions and that she may strike hard blows but never foul ones.” 

With Mr. Wade’s departure from the case, Ms. Willis now appears to be assuming an even larger role in one of the most anticipated trials in American history. CBS News reports that she is considering delivering the opening and closing statements at trial herself, and even cross-examining witnesses, which is rare for an elected district attorney who usually relies on more seasoned prosecutors.

That role could be complicated if Ms. Willis is drawn back into the details of Mr. Wade’s divorce. It was Mr. Wade’s divorce attorney, Terrence Bradley, who tipped off an attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, who represents one of the defendants, that Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis were romantically involved, and sent her text messages describing their romance. Despite this evidence, Mr. Bradley later testified under oath that he was engaging in “speculation.”