House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) had ordered Wade in a subpoena, reviewed by the Washington Examiner, to appear Thursday for the closed-door interview as part of the committee’s investigation into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s prosecution of former President Donald Trump.

However, Wade has been unresponsive to the subpoena, and his silence has led Jordan to take the unusual step of asking the U.S. Marshals Service to try to locate Wade in Georgia to serve him, according to a committee spokesperson.

“Nathan Wade’s evasion of service is extremely unusual and will require the Committee to spend U.S. tax dollars to locate him,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

A Republican lawyer familiar with the matter said that the U.S. Marshals Service has not been able to find Wade and that “at this point, we know he’s trying to avoid service.” The lawyer called Wade’s actions “clearly dilatory.”

Wade’s law office did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.

Wade’s apparent avoidance of the subpoena comes after two onetime advisers to former President Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, were imprisoned this year, each with four-month sentences, for failing to comply with House-issued subpoenas relating to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Willis hired Wade to lead her prosecution of Trump in 2021, but an undisclosed romantic relationship between the pair led Wade to resign from the case in March. Willis is facing the prospect of disqualification from the case over her relationship with Wade, and the Georgia Court of Appeals is expected to rule on the matter next year.

Jordan’s attempt to subpoena Wade comes after the Georgia lawyer backed out of appearing voluntarily for a scheduled interview last week at the last minute after initially agreeing to the appearance in July, according to a letter Jordan wrote to Wade.

The chairman said Wade’s attorney contacted the committee five days before Wade’s scheduled appearance to say that Wade had to postpone his appearance indefinitely based on instructions Wade received from Willis’s attorney Roy Barnes.

“The eleventh-hour intervention from District Attorney Willis does not excuse your failure to appear for your transcribed interview,” Jordan wrote.

Barnes had written to Wade that he would need to be accompanied by a lawyer representing the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office in any deposition so that the lawyer could “assert any necessary privilege objections” on Willis’s behalf.

Willis charged Trump and 18 co-defendants last year with racketeering violations and other charges, alleging they illegally attempted to overturn the 2020 election results. Willis brought Wade in to present the case to a grand jury and run the prosecution along with two other special prosecutors, despite Wade having no experience with racketeering cases.

The House Judiciary Committee began investigating Wade in May, observing how he made nearly $700,000 billing Fulton County for his services while in a relationship with Willis for at least part of the time he worked for her. Willis has argued that she gained nothing financially from the relationship and that she split costs with Wade when they would spend time together.

Jordan wrote in his letter to Wade that his committee was continuing to investigate “politically motivated prosecutions” and had an interest in whether Wade was paid using taxpayer dollars that included federal grant money. 

“District Attorney Willis reportedly compensated you and financed her politically motivated prosecution using a mixture of taxpayer funds, possibly including part of the $14.6 million in federal grant funds that her office received from the Department of Justice between 2020 and 2023,” Jordan wrote.

Jordan subpoenaed Willis herself for documents on her office’s grant money use in February. Willis has stood by her office’s spending.

“Any examination of the records of our grant programs will find that they are highly effective and conducted in cooperation with the Department of Justice and in compliance with all Department of Justice requirements,” Willis said in a statement in February.