The Fani Willis soap opera continues on because the details that keep emerging are too juicy to ignore.

As readers will recall, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is alleged to be having an affair with Nathan Wade, who is one of the lawyers her office hired to prosecute the Fulton County RICO case against Donald Trump and a long list of co-defendants. The alleged affair first hit the news in a court filing by a lawyer for one of those co-defendants, Michael Roman. Since then, Fani Willis has blamed this allegation on racism, then a conspiracy to interfere with the Trump case by Wade’s soon-to-be-ex-wife, Joycelyn Wade, and accused Joycelyn Wade of having an affair and breaking up her own marriage without any alleged interference by Willis. Joycelyn Wade and her attorney had sought to subpoena Fani Willis in the divorce case, and once Willis accused Joycelyn of having her own affair… well, Joycelyn decided to bring the receipts. Quite literally.

The filing, on behalf of Joycelyn Wade in her divorce case with Nathan Wade, included detailed credit card statements. They appear to bolster allegations of a romantic relationship between Nathan Wade and Willis. The trips took place in 2022 and 2023, after Willis had hired Wade as special prosecutor in the probe of election subversion by Donald Trump and his allies.

Joycelyn Wade’s attorneys attached to the filing records from Nathan Wade’s Capital One bank account. They show the following expenditures:

-On Oct. 4, 2022, Wade purchased American Airlines tickets to Miami for himself, Willis and Clara Bowman, who is believed to be Wade’s mother and who traveled from Texas. The three tickets cost a combined $1,367. That same day, he paid more than $2,600 to Royal Caribbean Cruises. On Oct. 5, Wade spent approximately $3,800 with Vacation Express, a company that offers vacation packages and tours. Wade, Willis and Bowman arrived in Miami on Oct. 28, according to flight records reviewed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The records also show that Wade paid for airfare to travel with Willis from Miami to Aruba. Bowman stayed in Miami and returned to Texas on Oct. 31, flight records show. There were additional charges on the card of $370 for the Hyatt Regency in Aruba on Nov. 4 and $3,173 to Norwegian Cruise Line on Nov. 7. It was not clear who took either of the cruises or who stayed at the Hyatt.

-On April 25, 2023, Wade purchased $817.80 in Delta Air Lines tickets to San Francisco in both his and Willis’ names, although they do not show when the flight was taken. They also show that on May 14, Wade spent $840.22 for what appears to be a stay at the DoubleTree hotel in Napa Valley.

The records do not show whether Wade and Willis stayed in the same room or whether Willis reimbursed him.

Those credit card statements are pretty hard evidence that Willis and Nathan Wade were having some kind of extracurricular relationship, and that puts both of them in hot water – in the court of public opinion at a minimum, and the consequences in an actual courtroom are yet to be determined. But as a result of all these allegations, the judge in the divorce case decided to unseal the entire kit and caboodle – while holding off on making Fani Willis sit for the deposition requested in the subpoena, for now.

Evidence of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ relationship with Nathan Wade — the special prosecutor bringing the election fraud charges — is included in the file, in the form of credit card charges for trips the pair took together to Florida and California.

Lawyers for Wade’s wife of 26 years, Joycelyn Wade, also state he has deliberately hidden his true earnings — totaling almost $700,000 for his work as special prosecutor — from her in an attempt to avoid paying her her fair share in their divorce.

Wade had initially filed for divorce a day after he was made special prosecutor, then immediately asked for the documents to be sealed — a hint that they contained information he did not want the public to see.

At an emergency hearing in Cobb County on Monday, Judge Henry Thompson decided the case should be available to the public and heard arguments as to whether Willis should sit for a deposition.

Andrea Hastings, an attorney for Joycelyn, argued Monday that Willis “knows the cause of the separation” between the former couple and accused her of hindering Hastings’ ability to access information relevant to the case.

Documents released from the file show repeated attempts by Wade to avoid disclosing his earnings, leading the court to order him to hand over bank statements to his wife’s legal team.

Joycelyn’s attorneys then accused Wade of leaving her destitute while spending lavishly — including on vacations with Willis, spending over $1,600 for flights to San Francisco in April 2023 and $1,200 on travel for them and Willis’ mother to Miami in October 2022.

On Monday, Willis’ lawyer Cinque Axom appeared by video to argue that Willis shouldn’t be deposed by Joycelyn because “alleged adultery is not relevant” and their divorce case “has nothing to do with Ms. Willis.”

Axom claimed the only matter in the divorce is how to divide the marital assets.

Hastings shot back, “I want to know how he has been spending his money. I have reason to believe he is spending it on another woman and that’s my client’s money.”

“We are not seeking her deposition as the DA,” Hastings clarified, adding she was seeking the deposition “as the alleged paramour of my client’s husband. I’m sure it’s inconvenient. It’s inconvenient for all of us. However, I have questions and she needs to answer them.”

The fact that Nathan Wade filed for divorce immediately after being named special prosecutor, and then asking for the divorce filing to be sealed, is just a LEETLE suspicious. And now Fulton County auditors are asking Fani Willis questions that she might not want to answer.

Fulton County Commissioner Bob Ellis, the chairman of the county’s audit committee, sent a letter to Willis Friday evening asking whether she engaged in a “romantic relationship” with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, “misused” county funds, and “accepted valuable gifts and personal benefits from a contractor/recipient of County funds.”

“These allegations involve your decision to appoint Nathan Wade to serve as a special prosecutor in the matter in which former President Trump is a co-defendant. Mr. Wade is alleged to (1) lack relevant prosecutorial experience in a case of this type and complexity, (2) have paid for your portion of multiple instances of joint leisure travel, and (3) be in a romantic relationship with you that was not disclosed to the court or to the parties in the case,” Ellis wrote.

Ellis cited credit card statements from a leaked filing in Wade’s open divorce case showing the special prosecutor purchased a pair of airline tickets which included Willis’s name. The transactional records, part of the sealed divorce case in the Cobb County Superior Court, coincide with allegations in a recent motion made by one of Trump’s co-defendants, Mike Roman, that claimed Willis improperly benefitted from Wade’s contract by joining him on several vacations.

Wade filed for divorce from his wife, Joycelyn Wade, on Nov. 2, 2021, which was also the day after his taxpayer-funded contract with Willis’s office started. His wife alleged in previous filings that he did not reveal his earnings from the county to her but continued to draw from her bank account. Wade’s firm has been paid as much as $654,000 from Willis’s office since 2022, according to public records.

And remember, Willis has yet to respond to Michael Roman’s court filing as well. The judge in THAT case – you know, the one that involves Donald Trump? – has ordered Willis to provide a response IN WRITING by February 2nd, and then will hold a hearing on the 15th. Fani Willis has some problems right now.

All of this is leading to an inescapable conclusion – Fani Willis and Nathan Wade should be removed from the case, IF the RICO case against Donald Trump and others is going to move forward. And it could still go forward without Willis and Wade – but would it? That is the question that Professor Jonathan Turley is pondering.

The remedy in this instance for any unethical conduct, if proven, may be the removal of the prosecutors, not the dismissal of an otherwise valid criminal case. While I have been critical of Willis’ case against Trump, her conduct does not change the underlying allegations against the former president.

The removal of Willis and Wade could also prompt the transfer of the case to a different jurisdiction.

Any of these changes could take time, of course, and the delay would play to Trump’s advantage. Yet, the case still would go on.

The most intriguing question is whether a new prosecutor would continue to support this controversial RICO case. Every prosecutor is under a personal obligation to determine whether there is an ethical basis to prosecute. Some prosecutors would likely balk at the tenuous connections used to sweep Trump into this grand conspiracy theory, which many critics believe Willis has pursued for political purposes.

Thus, an outside prosecutor might not share her priorities for prosecution. The Georgia case has a number of credible criminal charges against various defendants. The question is whether there would be the same overriding interest in bagging Trump under this novel alleged criminal enterprise.

The Georgia RICO case, now potentially compromised by the actions of Willis and Wade, now may be on a razor’s edge. While the case might not be dismissed, its impact would be highly blunted by the removal of Willis and Wade from the case, and if it triggers a change in venue, then that might end up being more favorable to Donald Trump. As Turley points out, what it does give Trump is time. And time is the one thing that Democrats didn’t want to give Trump.

All these prosecutors may have taken their shot too early to knock Trump down and out with legal cases. Each case has deep political motivations, and as we have now seen, the Republican primary voters simply don’t care about the court cases. But if Trump is convicted before a general election, that could affect turnout and support. This has now become a game of waiting out the clock, and Trump could manage to delay enough to win. And if he does, Democrats will have no one to blame but their own hubris, and Fani Willis and Nathan Wade’s indiscretions.

Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click