You know a court case has jumped into the public consciousness when people with no connection to it start making casual conversation about details of court filings, like the question a fellow Little League parent asked me after a batting practice last week.
“Did you hear the guy’s cell phone was in Hapeville more than 50 times?” the parent asked as we waited for practice to wrap up.
“The guy” in question was Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor in the Fulton County election interference case against former President Donald Trump. And his cell phone was allegedly tracked to the same area in Hapeville as the home where Wade’s boss and former flame, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, lived at the time.
For reasons once known only to Wade and Willis, but now known to millions after a televised evidentiary hearing last week, Willis and Wade struck up a romance at some point during, or possibly before, they took on the former president and his 18 co-defendants in the most closely watched case in state history.
About six months after Willis brought the sprawling racketeering case against them, attorneys for a lesser-known defendant, Michael Roman, filed a motion seeking to disqualify Willis and her entire team for what lawyers alleged was Willis’ conflict of interest in the Trump case. The DA was profiting off of the prosecution, the accusation went, because Wade had wined and dined her during their romance with money the DA’s office paid Wade’s firm to work on the Trump case.