Ousted former Trump prosecutor Nathan Wade was in the middle of an interview with CNN on Wednesday, when he was suddenly interrupted by a ‘media consultant’.
In what was a bizarre moment, in the middle of an ‘as-live’ television interview, Wade was being questioned by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins about the timeline of his relationship timeline with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, a Democrat.
Collins asked Wade when his romantic relationship with Willis had begun, but just as he was about to get into full flow with his answer, he was interrupted by his media consultant who told him to take his microphone off.
Before he was interrupted, Wade revealed that he still ‘regularly speaks’ with Willis and noted how the election interference case against former President Donald Trump ‘will live on’ despite him being removed from the case.
‘When did the romantic relationship between the two of you start?’ Collins then asked.
Trump prosecutor Nathan Wade was in the middle of an interview with CNN on Wednesday when he was suddenly interrupted by a ‘media consultant’
Willis had begun answering a question when he was in interrupted by his consultant who told him to take his microphone off
The pair then went to huddle in the corner of the room to whisper to one another
‘Yes, so we get into… there’s been this effort to say that, OK, these exact dates are at issue and these exact dates are…’
It was at that point, Wade suddenly appeared distracted and looked off camera stating that he was being ‘signaled here’.
The pair then went to huddle in the corner of the room for almost a minute as they whispered to one another about how to best answer the question.
They could both be seen looking over a document, while a bemused Collins was left sitting in the chair waiting for his return.
In the background, a CNN producer could be heard telling the cameraman to ‘keep rolling.’
When Wade got back to his seat, Collins resumed her line of questioning, asking Wade if he was ‘ok’.
‘Just to revisit the question, it was to clarify when the romantic relationship started and when it ended,’ Collins told Wade once again.
‘I don’t choose to say or do anything that would jeopardize the case or the court’s ruling,’ he said
Collins was left sitting in her chair while Wade stepped away in the middle of his interview
When Wade returned, he looked particularly sheepish at what had just happened
Former prosecutor Nathan Wade was being questioned about his relationship with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. The pair are seen together in a photo from August 2023
‘I believe that the public has through, through the testimony and other interviews, the public has a clear snapshot that this is clearly just a distraction,’ Wade replied.
‘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 responded, pushing to change the subject.
‘Certainly I would have never done anything that would have jeopardized that hard work…I do believe though the timing of the personal relationship I had was probably bad, it was bad timing but you don’t pick and choose when those things happen,’ Wade said.
‘What I believe is this whole conversation is a distraction that’s all. It’s a tool to stop the train, to slow down the inevitable, which is the trial of the defendant’s name in the election interference case,’ he went on.
Collins asked Wade if a sitting president could be put on trial.
‘I don’t believe it looks good to the rest of the world, but I don’t think there is anything that would prevent that from happening’, Wade said.
Collins suggested she did not think a sitting president would be sent to jail.
‘We know that sentencing is entirely up to a trial court. And it’s up to the court to determine if the appropriate sentence is jail time’, Wade added.
The appeals court might hear arguments in October over former President Trump’s efforts to have Willis removed from the election interference case she brought against him.
What is known is that Wade was hired by Willis to lead the investigation on November 1, 2021 – just one day before he filed for divorce.
Wade has testified that the relationship between the two started ‘around March’ 2022.
Willis, meanwhile, told Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee that it began ‘between February and April’ of that year.
But neither Willis nor Wade have given a precise date of when their tryst began.
The pair have also given different answers for the time periods as to when their romance ended.
Wade has said things came to an end in June or July 2023. Willis has August 2023 as her end date for the relationship.
‘The only thing I regret is the timing of it’, Wade has said previously.
Last week the appeals court froze Trump’s criminal trial proceedings for which he faces 13 felony counts, as it takes up his appeal to remove Willis from the case.
‘The Georgia Court of Appeals has properly stayed all proceedings against President Trump in the trial court pending its decision on our interlocutory appeal which argues the case should be dismissed and Fulton County DA Willis should be disqualified for her misconduct,’ Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead Georgia defense attorney, said in a statement.
Wade was the former special prosecutor in Fulton County and helped lead former President Trump’s criminal prosecution in Georgia.
He resigned from his position in March after Judge Scott McAffee, who is overseeing the case in the Superior Court of Fulton County, ruled that Willis could only stay on the case if Wade stepped down.