The unlikely press tour of District Attorney Fani Willis’s former boyfriend and special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, is increasingly looking almost as if it’s calculated to disqualify her from the case she brought against President Trump and 18 others.

On Thursday, Trump filed with the Georgia Court of Appeals his response to Ms. Willis’s effort to dismiss the disqualification petition that alleges her prosecution has been marred by a conflict of interest and  racially tinged rhetoric that has poisoned the jury pool at Fulton County, a majority-minority jurisdiction that comprises much of downtown Atlanta. 

In a statement emailed to the Sun, Trump’s attorney, Steven Sadow, calls Ms. Willis’s petition for the case to be dismissed due to insufficient evidence a  “‘Hail Mary’ motion” and “an obvious attempt to stop appellate review of DA Willis’ misconduct.” Mr. Sadow’s brief calls Ms. Willis a “deeply conflicted District Attorney who has engaged in — and continues to unapologetically engage in — extrajudicial forensic misconduct.”   

On Wednesday, Mr. Wade’s latest appearance on the “The Daily Show” was a colloquy with the comedian Marlon Wayans, who was playing a Borat-esque character named “Quon.” It comes after an interview between the lawyer and CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that was interrupted by a “consultant” to Mr. Wade. CNN’s cameras rolled as Mr. Wade and his “consultant” conferred, with their back to the camera, facing a bookcase. 

That intervention had come as soon as Mr. Wade was asked when the relationship between himself and Ms. Willis began. The formerly amorous pair have maintained, under oath, that their romance began only after he was hired to prosecute Trump. The presiding judge, Scott McAfee, found that an “odor of mendacity” was emitted by the pair’s representations to the court.

Indeed, the ex-couple’s romantic timeline was contradicted by Ms. Willis’s college friend and former colleague, Robin Yeartie, who is now estranged from Ms. Willis after she was pushed out of a job at the district attorney’s office. Ms. Yeartie testified that the romance began in 2019 before Mr. Wade became separated from his wife, Joycelyn. Ms. Yeartie alleges that she saw the couple “hugging, kissing and being affectionate” before November 2021, when Ms. Willis hired Mr. Wade.

Mr. Wade’s at times bawdy and even R-rated turn on the “Choppin’ It Up With ‘Quon’” segment is likely to further underscore the ongoing litigation over disqualification. Mr. Wade, attired in his trademark gray three piece suit, told Mr. Wayans that “DA Willis is a respectable mother, a brilliant legal mind. We spent countless hours preparing this case, investigating this case.” When Mr. Wade was hired, he never had prosecuted a felony case at trial.   

Mr. Wayans, whose credits include “White Chicks” and “Scary Movie,” asked Mr. Wade with respect to Ms. Willis if he “served her well?” Mr. Wade replied that “I did. I did my job.” Mr. Wayans repeatedly mimed sexual positions and asked Mr. Wade “How can you not hit that? How can you not?” The comedian also suggested that Mr. Wade gave Ms. Willis massages and foot rubs.

The exchange is remarkable given that the relationship between Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis is before the Georgia Court of Appeals, which will decide whether to keep intact Judge McAfee’s ruling allowing Ms. Willis to stay on the case if Mr. Wade departed. Trump contends that Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis are lying, and that their affair predated him securing the position, one day before his divorce, that would net him more than $650,000 from her office. 

It is undisputed that while the two worked together, they traveled to Aruba, Napa, and Belize. Mr. Wade paid, and Ms. Willis maintains that she paid him back in cash stored at her house, a practice that her father explained in court is a “Black thing.” Judge McAfee found that the arrangement exuded a “significant air of impropriety,” and Trump argues that it amounted to a conflict of interest that irreparably prejudiced his due process rights.

Mr. Wade’s time in front of the cameras raises the question of what his relationship is behind the scenes with the district attorney. An ally of Ms. Willis, though, the former mayor of Atlanta, Shirley Franklin, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that “it is an unnecessary distraction and disrespectful to both the process and the DA for Mr. Wade to be giving interviews.”

A former assistant United States attorney, Tom Morgan, told the AJC that Mr. Wade’s interviews are a “sideshow, but the sideshow is the show.” Mr. Wade asserted in an interview with ABC News that workplace romances of the kind he engaged in with Ms. Willis are “as American as apple pie” and expressed his regret “that a private matter became the focal point of this very important prosecution.”

Trump, in his brief filed on Thursday, contends that if Ms. Willis is kept on the case her presence would  “fatally infect all subsequent proceedings and require later reversal of any obtained conviction — all at great wasted time and expense to the courts, the parties, and the taxpayers.” He calls the district attorney’s efforts to short circuit his appellate hearing, scheduled for October 4, a “red herring.”