House Republicans are having a hard time delivering a subpoena to Nathan Wade, the former boyfriend of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, as they investigate Ms. Willis’s tactics in her racketeering prosecution of President Trump and his associates.  The House Judiciary Committee says Mr. Wade has not been found since the subpoena was issued so that he can be served, and suggested they may need to engage U.S. Marshals at taxpayer expense to locate him. 

In a statement to the Daily Caller, the committee says it is “extremely unusual” that they have been unable to locate Mr. Wade, who was forced off the prosecution of. Trump in May when the presiding judge ruled that an “odor of mendacity” was hanging over the case due to District Attorney Fani Willis’s personal, romantic relationship with Mr. Wade, and her decision to pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars for his work despite his lack of experience as a criminal prosecutor. 

“The Judiciary Committee has served over 100 subpoenas this Congress,” the committee spokesman, Russell Dye said in a statement. “We have done so, for the most part, without controversy or the need to use the U.S. Marshals.”

“Nathan Wade’s evasion of service is extremely unusual and will require the Committee to spend U.S. tax dollars to locate him,” Mr. Dye added.

Mr. Jordan first launched an investigation into Ms. Willis back in February, when he demanded the embattled district attorney turn over all information about her use of federal funds and her potential communications with federal law enforcement officials in the Biden administration. She called any allegations of wrongdoing “false” and “baseless” in a letter the following month, after the committee threatened to hold her in contempt of Congress. 

In February, Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis were subject to a grilling by defense lawyers for Trump and his other co-defendants on the stand in Fulton County, Georgia over the course of several days. Judge Scott McAfee, the presiding jurist, was unable to determine if Ms. Willis did use taxpayer funds for her own luxury vacations and personal enjoyment beyond a reasonable doubt (Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis had vacationed together in Aruba, the Napa Valley, and Belize, with Ms. Willis testifying that she reimbursed him with cash). Judge McAfee instead ordered that either Ms. Willis or Mr. Wade resign from the prosecution in order to preserve its integrity.

Mr. Wade promptly resigned. 

Trump is appealing the ruling, asking that Ms. Willis also be tossed from the case, though the Georgia Court of Appeals will not hear those arguments until after the November election. 

Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade both claimed on the stand that their romantic relationship did not commence until he’d aready been hired by Ms. Willis, and by the time of the February hearing with Judge McAfee, their romance was over. But eight months later, in early September, the two appeared in public together when Ms. Willis’s daughter was arrested in a neighboring county. Ms. Willis showed up at the side of a road near the scene of her daughter’s arrest, introducing herself as “Fani,” and describing Mr. Wade to officers as a friend. 

Ms. Willis has also been subpoenaed by Georgia state legislators conducting an investigation into what they call rogue prosecutors. She has refused to cooperate.

As for Mr. Wade, he was ubiquitous on the media circuit for weeks following his resignation from the case, including an appearance on CNN, which was interrupted by his lawyers, on “Good Morning America,” where he said office romances were “as American as apple pie”, and on “The Daily Show,” where comedian Marlon Wayans simulated a “baby yoga” sexual position during a discussion about Mr. Wade’s sexual congress with Ms. Willis.

The Judiciary Committee, under the leadership of Chairman Jordan, has launched a flurry of investigations into various state, local, and federal agencies since Republicans took the House majority in 2023. The panel’s involvement in the now-dead impeachment inquiry also required substantial resources and manpower. 

The committee has taken the lead on probing the many prosecutions of Trump that have sprung up since 2023, and even considered writing legislation in the hopes of helping the former president prove his innocence. There was a notable push earlier this year by some House conservatives and Judiciary Committee members to slash the funding of Special Counsel Jack Smith and his prosecutions of Trump. They also considered a bill that would have given former presidents the ability to move state and local cases to federal court. While Speaker Johnson said he was open to such ideas, he abandoned any such plans in the face of opposition from Senator Schumer and President Biden.