The private law firm of the Fulton County special prosecutor Nathan Wade — who helped charge Donald Trump and 18 Republicans for their role in objecting to the 2020 election — sent a solicitation to an indicted alternate elector purportedly offering to defend him from the charges Wade helped file.
On Thursday, David Shafer, one of Georgia’s 2020 Republican electors, revealed on X that he had received a solicitation from Wade & Campbell Firm, the private practice of Nathan Wade. Wade is the special prosecutor who helped DA Fani Willis indict Trump, Shafer, and others for lawfully contesting Georgia’s 2020 election results.
A photo accompanying the post shows a brochure with a photo of Wade and Christopher Campbell, his law partner, grinning. Shafer’s name and one of his charges (“Impersonating A Public Officer”) are printed along the bottom. According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC), the brochure was also accompanied by a letter “signed by Campbell advertising the firm’s legal services” that read: “Attorneys Wade & Campbell dedicate their criminal practice to protecting the rights of any and every individual charged with a Misdemeanor, Felony, DUI or Traffic Offense!!”
The American Bar Association (ABA) explicitly states that “In representing a client, a lawyer shall not communicate about the subject of the representation with a person the lawyer knows to be represented by another lawyer in the matter, unless the lawyer has the consent of the other lawyer or is authorized to do so by law or a court order.” As noted in a Thursday court filing by Shafer’s legal team, it was public record that Shafer had already acquired legal counsel by Aug. 22, 2023 — several weeks before Wade’s firm sent Shafer the solicitation.
As The Federalist previously reported, Willis and Wade claimed in their Aug. 14 indictment that Shafer and the other 2020 alternate electors “unlawfully falsely held themselves out” as Georgia’s “duly elected and qualified” presidential electors and further insisted these electors intentionally attempted to “mislead” figures such as then-Vice President Mike Pence and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger “into believing that they actually were such officers.”
But a transcript of the Georgia Republican electors’ meeting on Dec. 14, 2020, obtained by Willis and her team during their years-long investigation of Republicans, explicitly shows the intent behind casting alternate electors was not to impersonate public officers, as Willis and Wade alleged, but to lawfully preserve Trump’s legal challenge to the state’s election results.
While much of legacy media’s coverage has been devoted to Willis, Wade has played a significant role in helping the Fulton County DA weaponize the legal system against Shafer and his fellow Republicans. As reported by the AJC, “Wade has been a top deputy to Fulton DA Fani Willis on the elections investigation since early last year [and] led the DA’s presentations to the 23-member special grand jury that spent nearly eight months hearing witness testimony and collecting other evidence” in the case.
The outlet goes on to describe Wade as an “old friend” of Willis, who previously “mentored her when she briefly served as chief magistrate judge in South Fulton” and “advised [her] after she was elected and began staffing up her department.” County financial records also reportedly show that Willis’ office has “paid the Law Offices of Nathan J. Wade just shy of $549,000 since January 2022.”
In their motion for an evidentiary hearing filed in Fulton County Superior Court on Thursday, Shafer’s legal team alleged that Wade’s law firm violated ABA rules by partaking in “direct, uninvited, and improper communications” with Shafer.
“[T]he improper communication is far more egregious than a typical violation of the Rule, given the fact that it constitutes a communication with a criminal defendant by the lead prosecuting attorney’s law firm regarding charges which the attorney has been responsible for bringing,” the motion reads. “Surely Messrs. Campbell and Wade do not believe that Wade & Campbell could represent Mr. Shafer against the very criminal charges brought by Mr. Wade, its first named partner, and lead counsel in the prosecution.”
Shafer’s legal team furthermore requested that the court “determine an appropriate sanction” for the purported solicitation, “ranging from admonishment to disqualification.”
Wade & Campbell Firm did not immediately respond to The Federalist’s request for comment on why it sent — and whether it felt it was appropriate to send — the solicitation to Shafer. Nor did the law firm answer if it has sent the same or similar brochures to the other Republicans facing charges from the Fulton County DA’s office.
