Politics
Judge unseals Fulton County prosecutor's divorce case, Fani Willis deposition delayed
A judge on Monday ordered court records of the divorce proceedings of a special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, who is handling the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump, be made public and delayed the decision on whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will be deposed.
Cobb County, Georgia Superior Court Judge Henry Thompson ruled that he was vacating a previous order that kept records of the divorce proceedings sealed. That is what attorney Ashleigh Merchant, who represents former Trump campaign staffer and onetime White House aide Michael Roman, had asked the court to do.
“I find that the prior order, although it was by consent parties, was not properly entered because uniform’s superior court rules require a hearing to be had. We can find no evidence that any such hearing was ever had so I’m going to grant the motion, vacating the consent order sealing the record. And I’ll do that today. I have your written order,” Thompson said. The judge then said Merchant could be dismissed from the hearing.
Thompson later addressed Cinque Axam, a lawyer for Willis, saying the court would not yet decide on whether the Fulton County DA will be deposed. Willis’ deposition was originally set for Tuesday, but the judge said he first wants to hear from Nathan Wade on allegations of an extramarital affair directly during an evidentiary hearing in the divorce case set for Jan. 31.
FANI WILLIS’ PROSECUTOR, ALLEGED ROMANTIC PARTNER NOT ‘QUALIFIED’ TO HANDLE TRUMP ELECTION CASE: LEGAL ANALYST
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis speaks during a worship service at the Big Bethel AME Church on Sunday, Jan. 14, 2024, in Atlanta. (Miguel Martinez/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
“It seems to me that Mr. Wade would be the first and best source of information on what his income has been and how he’s been spending it. And that he would have firsthand knowledge of whether he’s engaged in an extramarital affair,” Thompson said. “Only after I hear what Mr. Wade has to say, do I think I can make a determination of whether the proposed deponent has any unique knowledge about these issues, because once again, this is a math problem, and we need to find a solution to.”
“So with all that being said, I’m not prepared. Mr. Axam, to grant your protective order. But since the deposition is set for tomorrow and our first evidentiary hearing is set for the 31st, I will issue a stay,” the judge continued. “And I will stay the deposition until I’m in a better position to make a determination of whether the proposed deponent would have any unique knowledge, unique being the key word there, that is not possessed by Mr. Wade himself.”
A motion filed last week by the defense attorney in the election case alleges that Willis was involved in a romantic relationship with attorney Nathan Wade.
FULTON COUNTY DA FANI WILLIS ATTEMPTS TO QUASH SUBPOENA RELATED TO ALLEGED MISCONDUCT
Special prosecutor Nathan Wade listens during a motions hearing for former President Trump’s election interference case, Friday, Jan. 12, 2024 in Atlanta. (Elijah Nouvelage/The Washington Post via AP, Pool)
Axam wrote in a filing Thursday that lawyers for Wade’s wife, Joycelyn Wade, served a subpoena to the district attorney last week.
The filing says that the subpoena is being sought “in an attempt to harass and damage” Willis’ professional reputation and accuses Joycelyn Wade of having “conspired with interested parties in the criminal Election Interference Case to use the civil discovery process to annoy, embarrass, and oppress” the district attorney.
The attempt to question Willis is “obstructing and interfering” with an ongoing criminal case, Axam wrote in the court filing Thursday seeking to quash the subpoena.
Andrea Hastings, a lawyer for Joycelyn Wade, said they want to help her “resolve her divorce fairly and privately.”
Former President Trump and Trump campaign staff member Michael Roman pose for their booking photos at the Fulton County Jail in August 2023. Trump, Roman and 17 others are facing felony charges in the indictment related to allegedly tampering with the 2020 election in Georgia. (Fulton County Sheriff’s Office via Getty Images)
In a response filed Friday, Hastings wrote that Nathan Wade has taken trips to San Francisco and Napa Valley, Florida, Belize, Panama and Australia and has taken Caribbean cruises since filing for divorce and that Willis “was an intended travel partner for at least some of these trips as indicated by flights he purchased for her to accompany him.”
The filing includes credit card statements that show Nathan Wade, after he had been hired as special prosecutor, bought plane tickets in October 2022 for him and Willis to travel to Miami and bought tickets in April to San Francisco in their names. Joycelyn Wade’s filing says she is seeking to question Willis about “her romantic affair” with Nathan Wade, saying there “appears to be no reasonable explanation for their travels apart from a romantic relationship.”
Trump and 18 allies were indicted in Georgia over their alleged efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss in the state, with prosecutors using a statute normally associated with mobsters to accuse the former president, lawyers and other aides of a “criminal enterprise” to keep him in power.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Politics
Jared Kushner’s overseas luxury resort project faces anti-corruption investigation amid violent protests
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Albanian anti-corruption prosecutors are investigating changes to the protected status of a coastal wetland where a luxury resort project linked to Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of U.S. President Donald Trump, has drawn environmental opposition and protests, according to Politico.
SPAK, Albania’s special anti-corruption prosecution office, has opened a probe into changes made to the status of the Vjosa-Narta protected landscape in Zvërnec, Politico reported. The coastal wetland area is home to flamingos, Mediterranean monk seals, and sea turtle nesting sites, Politico reported.
IVANKA TRUMP BREAKS DOWN IN EMOTIONAL INTERVIEW TALKING ABOUT HER MOTHER IVANA’S DEATH, OTHER CHALLENGES
Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff participate in a charter announcement for President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace initiative in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 22, 2026. (Denis Balibouse/Reuters)
In 2024, Kushner publicly discussed plans for his firm, Affinity Partners, to develop luxury tourism projects in Albania, including in the Zvërnec area. Earlier this year, he visited the area with his wife, Ivanka Trump.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama recently confirmed to Politico that talks were ongoing between the government and Kushner over the deal, which is expected to include roughly 10,000 hotel rooms and villas.
EUROPEAN CAPITAL ROCKED BY VIOLENT PROTESTS AS GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION PROBE FUELS UNREST
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama speaks during a press conference following the EU-Albania Intergovernmental Conference in Brussels, Belgium, on May 26, 2026. (Daniel Gnap/NurPhoto)
“I want to make Albania a country that is a destination to be envied in the region, and this project is part of this effort,” Rama said Monday.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Affinity Partners and SPAK for comment.
Protests by Albanian citizens and nonprofit groups began in May when large, barbed-wire-topped fences were erected at the proposed site, preventing locals and tourists from accessing the beach. On Sunday, protesters assembled outside government offices to demand an end to the project as well as Rama’s resignation.
Jared Kushner speaks during the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace at the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 19, 2026. Kushner is facing pushback in Albania over a luxury development project. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
Following Sunday’s protests, footage emerged showing private security guards appearing to assault and drag a protester along a cliff. Some guards allegedly threatened other demonstrators who were attempting to remove fences and halt construction.
The licenses of two private security companies were revoked following the incident. Meanwhile, around 15 protesters have been charged, and the local police chief has been stripped of his duties.
Politics
NBC News will put ‘Kornacki Cam’ on the L.A. mayoral, California gubernatorial races
After the polls close in California on Tuesday, NBC News chief data analyst Steve Kornacki will just be getting started.
Since December, the khaki-clad vote-counting guru has been going live and uninterrupted on streaming platforms to provide results and analysis of every special election and even some state Senate contests.
The stream — called the Kornacki Cam — provides unadulterated number crunching without any pundits weighing in. Rather than getting updates that last a few minutes, Kornacki provides continuous real-time results until the last available total is counted.
“This all happens in full view,” Kornacki said Monday in a phone interview. “The audience gets to see the whole thing. They get to see the buildup, the anticipation, the payoff.”
In the 10 Kornacki Cam sessions streamed by NBC News so far, 19 million viewers have sampled them across all platforms. The coverage — consisting of Kornacki, his Big Board, his producer and a Stedicam operator — is available on YouTube, NBCNews.com, the NBC News app and the division’s social media accounts on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
The Kornacki Cam will focus on the primaries for Los Angeles mayor, California and several congressional districts, shortly after the state’s polls close at 8 p.m. Pacific. NBC News has its own decision desk, which the network said has called the results of 70% of the 2026 elections ahead of the Associated Press.
In a Monday chat with The Times, here are the trends Kornacki says he’ll be looking for on the night.
Polling in mayoral races is typically pretty unreliable. What do you make of the contest based on what you’ve seen?
You don’t always have super-competitive mayoral elections and they’re not all created equal. It’s not quite like a presidential election so you just don’t have a wealth of data to draw on for expectations either.
I’ve seen the polling you’ve seen. It suggests that of the three candidates (Mayor Karen Bass, reality TV star Spencer Pratt and City Council member Nithya Raman), Bass is in the best position to get into the runoff. It also suggests that Spencer Pratt has had the most positive movement in the last month or so of the campaign. But we go in knowing there will be volatility and I’m open to any and all possibilities.
Spencer Pratt is an unusual candidate who has been able to take up a lot of oxygen in the race. Is there a hidden vote for him that people might not be eager to admit to pollsters?
You can look at the city and know where to look for whether Pratt is having a big night. The San Fernando Valley is gonna be more than a third of the vote, probably close to 40%. If he gets in the general election, he wants to be winning there by a big margin. If it’s not happening there for Pratt, I don’t think it’s happening anywhere else. Karen Bass is going to rely on central and South L.A., with probably a third of the vote coming out of those two places. Those should be her bulwarks. The Westside, I think could be more of a toss-up. There’s a fair chunk of the vote there.
We don’t do a ton of mayoral races around the country. So we’re still trying to figure out exactly how detailed we’re going to be able to zoom in, at the neighborhood level and the precinct level.
Turnouts usually are low for Los Angeles mayoral races. Will this year be different?
This mayoral race has received a lot more national attention than 2022. So my thought is that the turnout would be higher, just based on that. But this is something that is resonating nationally because Pratt has that celebrity factor. The number was 646,000 (total votes) for 2022. So that’s something we’ll be following — are we trending over or under that?
And what will be the best indicators for the gubernatorial race?
The place that I kind of got circled here is Orange County. In the last two sort of major statewide elections, it was the first to report out (its) vote. At 8:06 p.m local time in California, in 2024, Orange County reported out half of its vote, right? So you’re getting, you know, you’re getting hundreds of thousands of votes, potentially, from this enormous county within, potentially within 10 minutes of polls closing. There were a couple others — the Central Valley, and we got a good chunk of Merced and Fresno quickly.
So how long are we going to have to wait for a result on Tuesday night?
One of the other things that just surrounds everything in California, whether it’s the mayor’s race, or governor’s race, or anything else, is nothing is definitive in the first hour or so after the polls close. We’re probably realistically looking at a days or even weeks-long process of getting all the vote counted.
I know it drives many people nuts. Without editorializing on that, it’s just a fact that they can get out of about two-thirds of their vote on election night, and if the races aren’t clear and definitive, then you’re generally in for a pretty long haul.
We do know in California that they’re not going (to count) nonstop until they get a result. They’re going to then start doing updates as they process and count the remaining vote by mail, which is usually a considerable pile in a lot of these places. The vote by mail in California can continue coming in for seven days after the election.
So do you think your coverage reflects a shift in what the consumer wants? We already know how fragmented the audience is. Are there now enough political junkies who want the pure uncut stuff?
I’ve been doing this about 20 years, and when I would tell people that I reported on politics for a living, they either moved away from me or changed the subject. And now, you know, I found the last, you know, 10 years or something, has just totally changed. People come up to me, even if they don’t know I work in politics, and they want to talk politics. Everybody seems into it whatever side they’re on.
Politics
Video: Judge Decides to Keep Charlie Kirk Hearings Open to Public
new video loaded: Judge Decides to Keep Charlie Kirk Hearings Open to Public
transcript
transcript
Judge Decides to Keep Charlie Kirk Hearings Open to Public
Utah district judge, Tony Graf, rejected the defense’s bid to close the hearings in the Charlie Kirk murder case. The defendant, Tyler J. Robinson, is accused of fatally shooting Mr. Kirk, the conservative activist.
-
A party seeking to close a preliminary hearing must show that adverse publicity traceable to the opening hearing poses a realistic likelihood of prejudice to a fair trial. Public access to the judicial — to judicial proceedings also serve in an important role in maintaining confidence in the fairness and transparency of the judicial process. This court finds these showings have not been made here.
By Meg Felling
June 1, 2026
-
Lifestyle11 minutes agoThis is what you want to read this summer : It’s Been a Minute
-
Technology21 minutes agoPebblebee’s Halo can help track lost items and keep you safe, and it’s on sale for $50
-
World26 minutes agoHidden tunnel discovered in Tijuana may have supported cross-border trafficking operations
-
Politics33 minutes agoJared Kushner’s overseas luxury resort project faces anti-corruption investigation amid violent protests
-
Health36 minutes agoVeterans face surprising threat after cancer diagnosis, study reveals
-
Sports41 minutes agoRick Adelman, architect of some of the NBA’s best offenses and Hall of Famer, dead at 79
-
Technology48 minutes agoYour Microsoft text codes are going away
-
Business51 minutes agoCompany wants to revive Primm, the gambling spot turned ghost town. Owners say: Not so fast