Re: Why Nathan Wade, under fire for alleged affair with Fani Willis, is facing new scrutiny

[Hose Dispensers]

On 26 Feb 2022, Lefty Lundquist <lefty_l...@ggmail.com> posted some
news:svdrce$u4f$1...@dont-email.me:

> Unethical black Marxist pigs under fire.

MARIETTA, Ga. — A year before Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis
hired Nathan Wade to lead the election fraud case against former President
Donald Trump, the relatively unknown private attorney was embroiled in
another high-profile case investigating suspicious deaths in an Atlanta-
area jail.

Now, as Willis faces accusations of having an improper personal and
professional relationship with Wade, his work on the jail deaths case is
also being placed under a microscope - including by a defense lawyer
seeking to have them both kicked off the Trump prosecution.

Accusations that Wade mishandled the jail-deaths investigation in 2020 are
adding to questions about Willis’s judgment in hiring him for the
sensitive assignment of investigating the former president and alleged co-
defendants in their alleged effort to overturn Georgia’s presidential
election that year.

“Ms. Willis is relying on him being appointed in Cobb County as part of
his credentials for why she hired him … and why he was qualified,” said
Ashleigh Merchant, a prominent Atlanta defense lawyer.

“So I think it's important to see what happened in Cobb,” Merchant, who is
representing one of Trump’s co-defendants in the election fraud case,
Michael Roman, told USA TODAY. “I think it's relevant to what's going on
now because it does reflect on her decision to hire him.”

Now, as part of her effort to get the Trump case dismissed, Merchant is
seeking documentation from Cobb County to determine if there was potential
corruption and cronyism involving Willis, Wade and a third person, the
former No. 2 at the Sheriff's Department, Sonya Allen.

Wade did not respond to a request for comment. Willis and Allen, the
former Sheriff’s department official — who now works for Willis as a top
aide — also did not respond to requests for comment sent to the Fulton
County DA’s office. Last month, however, Willis strongly defended Wade's
qualifications and her decision to hire him back in November 2021 for the
Trump investigation, which was then nine months old.

Jail crisis scrutiny ‘has to stop’
Wade was hired by the Cobb County Sheriff’s Department in June 2020, after
more than a year and a half of brutally critical media coverage about the
deaths of predominantly Black inmates, including one who begged repeatedly
to be sent to the hospital for nearly eight hours while struggling to
breathe.

“It has to stop!” then-Deputy Chief Allen said about the “constant attack
and scrutiny” by the media and civil rights advocates in a June 14, 2020,
previously undisclosed email to the department’s rank and file, a copy of
which was obtained by USA TODAY. Allen wrote that she retained Wade’s law
firm to review cases "that have involved alleged excessive use of force,
deadly force, discrimination or neglect ... with a fine-tooth comb.”

“This is not a witch-hunt,” Allen told her colleagues, who patrol Cobb
County, conduct investigations and oversee the county jail complex and
Adult Detention Center, “it's a desire to clear the name of this agency
and its men and women and of course to give the public the peace of mind
they deserve.”

’My brainchild’
When Wade finished his investigation later that year, he released no
formal public report about what led to the deaths at the notoriously
dangerous lock-up.

Asked about his findings for a local TV news investigation, Wade conceded
that he created no “documents, communications, or records memorializing,
reflecting evidence, or relating to the work,” according to the news
station, 11Alive.

“I have obviously my brainchild, what’s going on in my mind about it.
That’s what I have,” Wade told a lawyer for 11Alive who was trying to
obtain Sheriff’s Department internal records about the probe through
public records act requests. That outcome was condemned by local criminal
justice reform activists and defense attorneys, some of whom said Wade’s
investigation helped the Sheriff’s Department use the pretense of an
ongoing investigation to deny public access to potentially embarrassing
records.

'Total disregard of his duty’
One of those defense lawyers, Cindi Yeager, now questions why Willis would
hire Wade to oversee one of the most consequential public interest
investigations in recent history into whether Trump — and some of his
White House and campaign aides, including his lawyer Rudy Giuliani and
former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows tried to illegally overturn
the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia that Trump lost
to Democrat Joe Biden.

“Based on the complete lack of following the necessary protocol for
conducting a proper investigation, I would question anyone who would
consider utilizing Mr. Wade’s services for this type of investigation,
especially one that involves such complicated issues as in the Trump
election prosecution,” Yeager said Thursday.

“To say he kept no written notes, no record of interviews conducted, no
record of reports he reviewed, amounts to a total disregard of his duty,”
said Yeager, who is now the co-chief assistant District Attorney in Cobb
County.

A bombshell allegation and trips to California wine country
Roman’s defense attorney Merchant garnered international headlines on Jan.
8 when she filed a bombshell court motion alleging that Willis was having
an “an improper, clandestine personal relationship” with Wade that should
result in both of them — and the entire DA’s office — being disqualified
from prosecuting the case and to dismiss the whole case on that basis.

What’s more, Merchant alleged, Wade was using some of the more than
$650,000 he made as chief special prosecutor in the Trump case to take
Willis on romantic vacations to California wine country, Florida and
Caribbean cruises.

Since then, Trump himself — and a third co-defendant — have joined in
Merchant’s motion.

Jailhouse deaths and a controversial investigation
Neither Willis nor Wade has commented specifically about those
allegations. The presiding judge in the case, Scott McAfee, has given
Willis until Feb. 2 to respond. He has also set a Feb. 15 court date for a
hearing on the motion to disqualify.

As part of her effort to have the election fraud case tossed, Merchant
recently filed three requests seeking information about Wade’s handling of
the jail investigation in Cobb, a suburban enclave just north of Fulton
County, which includes Atlanta.

More: Georgia DA Fani Willis rejects idea that Trump prosecution could
amount to election interference

Those requests, which Merchant shared with USA TODAY, seek “any and all
documentation, emails, meeting notes, letters” and other information
regarding Wade’s probe into “potential problems and wrongdoing” at the
jail.

To that end, Merchant is focusing particularly on how aggressively Wade
and his law firm investigated four jailhouse deaths in 2019 and 2020,
including Kevil Wingo, a 37-year-old father of three who unsuccessfully
begged for medical attention because he couldn’t breathe.

An 11Alive investigation uncovered and aired videotape of Wingo thrashing
about in his cell.

After refusing to check his vitals, the jail nurse in charge put Wingo in
a padded cell “to mute his screams for help,” 11Alive reported. “He died
59 minutes later from a perforated ulcer.”

Wade’s pricey ‘pro bono’ probe
Merchant’s records request also seeks to determine how much money Wade and
others at his law firm were paid for the investigation.

Invoices show that Wade billed at $550 an hour for his services, despite
an Oct. 8, 2020 affidavit also obtained by USA TODAY, in which Sonya Allen
of the Sheriff's department said Wade and his law firm had offered to do
the investigation “pro bono,” or for free, “as a public service to the
community.”

Merchant has also filed public records act requests with the Fulton County
DA’s office for information she says she needs to prepare for the Feb. 15
hearing. On Tuesday, she subpoenaed both Willis and Wade to testify at
that hearing, contending that the DA’s office is intentionally withholding
the information she seeks.

A Fulton County DA’s office official, in an interview Wednesday, said the
office is complying with Merchant’s request.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing
investigations, also declined to comment on Willis’ relationship with Wade
and with Allen, who now works for Willis as head of the Fulton County DA’s
Anti-Corruption Division, and whether their performance in the Cobb jail
investigation undermines her confidence in them.

The Fulton County DA’s office says the unit was established “to evaluate
issues of government corruption and law enforcement misconduct to include
elected officials, election tampering, sheriff deputies, and police
officers.”

Wade's boss in jail probe joins Fani Willis’ office
Last month, Willis defended her selection of Wade for the Trump
investigation, saying he is not only a “great friend” but an experienced
lawyer with the “impeccable” credentials needed to be a special prosecutor
overseeing the sprawling racketeering case and she contrasted attacks on
Wade with the fact that the white lawyers Willis has hired for this case
haven’t been publicly scrutinized.

"The Black man I chose has been a judge more than 10 years, run a private
practice more than 20, represented businesses in civil litigation - I
ain’t done y’all,” Willis said in a Sunday morning sermon Jan. 14 at the
Big Bethel A.M.E Church in Atlanta. “Served as a prosecutor, a criminal
defense lawyer, special assistant attorney general.”

Willis also referenced Wade’s jail investigation, noting that an elected
Republican - Cobb County Sheriff Neil Warren - had hired him for that job.

"How come ... the same Black man I hired was acceptable when a Republican
in another county hired him and paid him twice the rate?” Willis asked.
“Why is the white male Republican's judgement good enough, but the black
female Democrat's not?"

While Willis admitted being a “flawed” human being who makes mistakes, she
did not address specifically whether she and Wade have been involved
romantically.

Willis also has had nothing but praise for former Deputy Sheriff Allen,
who she hired soon after taking office. At the time, Wade was helping
Willis staff her team, according to three people familiar with his work
for her.

Merchant, the Trump case defense lawyer, is also seeking information about
Allen’s role in the Cobb County Jail probe and in hiring and overseeing
Wade’s work on it.

“I think it's relevant to what's going on now because it does reflect on
(Willis’s) decision to hire him, how she chose him and also the fact that
Sonya Allen... is integral to him getting this contract in Fulton County,”
Merchant said of the Trump investigation. She cited “witness interviews
that I conducted” in the Trump case for why she believes Allen helped Wade
get the assignment.

Clark Cunningham, a professor of law and ethics at Georgia State
University College of Law, told USA TODAY that "Ashleigh Merchant is
barking up a lot of trees and using all of her resourcefulness” in her
defense of her client, but that her efforts are justified because of
Wade’s key role in the jail probe.

“The fact that he apparently had no written records of his investigation
and produced no written report - it seems to me if I were in a position of
retaining a lawyer for something of such importance as this current case
that it would certainly give me pause,” Cunningham said Thursday.

Investigating Donald Trump
The Fulton County DA official downplayed Allen’s prior lack of
prosecutorial experience, saying Willis hired her to help oversee the
office’s many investigations into corruption in its own Sheriff’s
Department and jail system.

But by the end of her first month on the job, Willis also was clearly
focusing on the “elected officials, election tampering” element of the
anti-corruption unit that unit that Allen was now overseeing.

A few weeks later, Willis sent a letter to top Georgia officials,
informing them that she had launched a criminal investigation into
possible interference in the state's 2020 general election – including
Trumps’ now-infamous call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to
“find 11,780 votes,” or just enough for him to win the key swing state.

And on Nov. 1 of that year, Willis hired Wade to be the lawyer who would
lead that investigation.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2024/02/01/nathan-wade-fani-
willis-affair-new-probe/72436733007/