Nathan Wade admitted to multiple White House meetings during Trump Georgia probe, transcript suggests

Former Fulton County special prosecutor Nathan Wade met with Biden administration staff on at least two occasions during District Attorney Fani Willis' probe into former President Donald Trump, a newly released transcript suggests.

Wade was interviewed by House Judiciary Committee staff last week as part of Chairman Jim Jordan's probe into the prosecutions of the former president.

A grand jury indicted Trump and allies last year on charges related to alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.

Wade did not disclose the details of his supposed meetings with White House representatives, including if they were in-person or remote, but he acknowledged the existence of invoices and other records that indicated discussions occurred.

At one point, the transcript shows Wade was asked about an invoice line indicating "travel to Athens; conf with White House counsel, May 23rd, 2022."

"So if it says conf with White House counsel, that would mean there was a conf with White House counsel?" investigators asked, according to the transcript.

Wade responded that the semicolon written after "travel to Athens" represented a separate thought.

The investigator asked, "So if you billed for a conf with White House counsel, would that have occurred?"

Wade challenged, "If I billed for a conf with White House counsel, this document doesn’t say that that cong with White House counsel happened in Athens. That’s not what that says."

Pressed again on whether the reference to White House counsel meant he billed for a conference with such an official, Wade said, "Yes."

Wade later said he did not recall details of the meeting denoted by a record reading, "Interview with D.C./White House, November 18th, 2022. Eight hours at $250. Cost $2,000," according to the transcript.

Details he did not recall included participants in the meeting, any possible travel, or who was involved in scheduling it.

But when asked, "And if you billed for it, if you billed 8 hours for interview with D.C./White House, it's safe to assume that you would have taken part in the interview?," Wade replied, "Yes ma’am."

The transcript does not indicate what the meetings were about, including whether they were related to Trump. 

Andrew Evans, Wade's attorney, pointed out to Fox News Digital that Wade said he had "no specific memory of those meetings."

Evans also pointed to another section of the transcript in which Wade said the invoices did not signify whether the listed meetings were with the Trump White House or Biden White House, and that it did not specify whether they were about the White House or with officials from it.

"Wade also noted that if he met with current White House employees, it would have been because prosecutors wanted to interview individuals like former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows. The United States Supreme Court case of United States ex rel. Touhy v. Ragen, 340 U.S. 462 (1951), requires that prosecutors confer with government officials before interviewing current or former federal employees," Evans said.

Wade said he did not know or recall information dozens of times throughout the course of the interview.

Wade was brought into the Fulton County investigation by Willis as a special prosecutor but stepped away after it was revealed he and Willis began a romantic relationship, which has since ended.

Jordan has been seeking a committee sit-down with Wade for months over accusations that both he and Willis profited off of the probe during their relationship – something both circles have vehemently denied.

Both Willis and Wade have maintained that their relationship had nothing to do with the case and have accused Republicans of trying to unjustly interfere in the Fulton County probe.

One of Trump’s co-defendants had sued to have Willis and Wade disqualified from the case, arguing their relationship presented a conflict of interest and that they financially benefited from the probe.

A Fulton County judge ruled in March that Willis could stay on the case if Wade was removed. Wade subsequently resigned from the case.

The former special prosecutor was grilled by investigators for over four hours on Capitol Hill last week.

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Fighting, assaults on staff in Alabama prisons increase in latest report

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Instances of fighting and assaults on staff within Alabama prisons increased year-over-year in August as state lawmakers continue to grapple with the state’s violent prison system.

According to the new report from the Alabama Department of Corrections, there were 916 total instances of fighting among inmates from October of 2023, the beginning of the current fiscal year, to Aug. 31, representing a roughly 13% increase when compared to the same period last year, which saw 811 documented fights.

Instances of inmate assaults on prison staff had also increased, with 479 cases as of Aug. 31, up from 453 reported the previous year for an increase of more than 5%.

The month of August alone saw 93 documented fights and 57 inmate assaults on prison staff, also an increase when compared to data from August of last year, which saw 83 fights and 41 assaults on staff.

Disciplines for both minor and major infractions were up too, with 3,695 minor and 11,358 major infractions reported in the fiscal year to date through August. This represents an 18% and 14% increase, respectively, over last year.

Inmate-on-inmate assaults, however, were down. Fiscal year to date, there were 1,234 documented assaults within Alabama prisons, down more than 14% from the 1,444 documented during the previous year.

Instances of violence within Alabama prisons were primarily seen in its medium and high security facilities. 

Ventress Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison designed to house 650 inmates but currently holds 1,323, saw the highest number of assaults with 246 through August. Limestone Correctional Facility, a high-security prison, saw the second-highest number of assaults at 208.

Violence within Alabama’s prisons has increased over the years, with the prison homicide rate increasing from 13 per 100,000 in 2016 to 85 per 100,000 in 2019, more than seven times the national rate.

That violence has generally been attributed to an overcrowded prison population, exacerbated by the state releasing inmates on parole at among the lowest rates in the country, releasing eligible inmates at a rate of just 8% last year. In recent months, however, the state’s parole rate has climbed significantly.

Regarding staffing, ADOC has been roughly short of 2,000 correctional officers since 2017. Even with a significant increase in correctional officer pay last year, the department has continued to see staffing shortages.

The report comes ahead of the third meeting of the Joint Prison Oversight Committee on Wednesday. The committee’s previous two hearings saw family members and loved ones of incarcerated Alabamians speak by the dozen, recounting stories of prisons fraught with violence, murder and extortion.

As of Aug. 31, ADOC’s jurisdictional population, which includes all incarcerated Alabamians, including those in county jails or federal prisons, was 27,428, up from the 26,947 from the same time last year.

READ MORE: Fighting, assaults on staff in Alabama prisons increase in latest report - Alabama Daily News