A Georgia judge unsealed a divorce case on Monday that has entangled the Atlanta district attorney prosecuting former President Donald J. Trump, but halted plans to force the testimony of the prosecutor, Fani T. Willis.
One of the parties to the divorce, Nathan Wade, is the lawyer whom Ms. Willis hired to manage the election interference case against Mr. Trump and his allies.
Earlier this month, Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign official who is one of Mr. Trump’s co-defendants, asserted in a filing that the two prosecutors were in a romantic relationship, and that Ms. Willis may have violated local and state laws by hiring Mr. Wade.
The same day, Ms. Willis received a subpoena from Mr. Wade’s wife, Joycelyn Wade, to testify in the divorce case.
While Mr. Roman initially provided no evidence of a relationship, a filing last week in the Wade divorce case included credit card statements showing that Mr. Wade purchased airline tickets for himself and Ms. Willis on April 25, 2023, for a trip from Atlanta to San Francisco, and on Oct. 4, 2022, for a trip to Miami.
The accusations do not change the underlying facts in the Trump prosecution. A Georgia grand jury already brought racketeering indictments against Mr. Trump and 18 others over their roles in a plot to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. Four of the defendants have already pleaded guilty, including some of Mr. Trump’s staunchest 2020 defenders, the lawyers Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis.
But the accusations complicate the case considerably. In a letter to Ms. Willis on Friday, the Fulton County commissioner who chairs an audit committee demanded documents in an effort to determine whether county funds paid to Mr. Wade “were converted to your personal gain in the form of subsidized travel or other gifts.” Mr. Wade has been paid $250 an hour for his work on the case, earning more than $650,000 so far.
There are also calls for a new state board, created to oversee district attorneys, to review Ms. Willis’s conduct.
On Monday, Mr. Roman’s lawyer, argued during a brief hearing in suburban Cobb County that the Wade divorce records, sealed since February 2022, had not been sealed properly. Judge Henry R. Thompson of Cobb County Superior Court agreed, unsealing the divorce file.
Ms. Willis’s lawyer, Cinque Axam, argued to keep her out of the divorce case. He said that his client “does not share any accounts” with Mr. Wade and added that Ms. Willis did not have unique insight into the case, and thus should not be deposed.
Andrea Dyer Hastings, Ms. Wade’s lawyer, referred to Ms. Willis as the “alleged paramour of my client’s husband.”
“I want to know about how he’s been spending his money,” Ms. Hastings told the judge. “I have reasons to believe he’s spending it on another woman. That’s my client’s money. And I want to ask questions about that.”
The judge said that because the Wades’ two children are adults, the only issue to determine is how to divide the couple’s money. “What we have here is a math problem,” he said.
He stayed Ms. Willis’s deposition, which had been planned for Tuesday, saying he wished to hear from Mr. Wade first.
