by It was one of the most surprising developments yet in Georgia’s election interference case against former President Donald J. Trump and his allies: The two lead prosecutors took the witness stand Thursday in a daylong hearing, and defense attorneys questioned them about their personal lives.
The defense argues that Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, and her office should be disqualified and removed from the prosecutor’s office, accusing her of benefiting financially from a relationship with the lead prosecutor she hired to handle the case, Nathan Wade.
If the judge removes them from the case, it would delay and potentially derail a proceeding that has major implications for the 2024 presidential election. Here are takeaways from the combative hearing:
Defense attorneys focused on the couple’s expenses.
In some of the sharpest questioning of the day, defense lawyers pressed Mr. Wade about his finances, trying to cast doubt on his claims that Ms. Willis had paid him in cash for his share of expensive trips while they were dating, including Belize. , Aruba, Tennessee and California.
Wade called Willis a “strong, independent woman” who insisted that “she’s going to pay her own way.” Regarding a trip to California, she said, “everything we did when we got to Napa, she paid for.” But Wade also said she typically reimbursed him in cash, so she had no receipts available.
Willis strongly refuted suggestions that he had not paid his share of the trips and said he keeps thousands of dollars in cash at his home. “For many years I have kept money in my house,” he said.
A former friend questioned the timeline of the relationship.
Defense attorneys have said the relationship between the two prosecutors began before Wade was hired in November 2021. Willis and Wade have disputed that, saying the relationship began in early 2022.
Their timeline was called into question Thursday by testimony from Willis’s former friend, Robin Bryant-Yeartie, who said she had “no doubt” that the two had begun a romantic relationship earlier than they claimed.
But Wade, who testified for several hours, stood by his claim that the relationship began only after he was hired. He also revealed that it had been completed in the summer of 2023.
Fani Willis responded harshly to defense attorneys.
The confrontation between Ms. Willis and defense lawyers became so tense at several points that Presiding Judge Scott McAfee warned the parties several times to limit their responses to preserve decorum.
Ms. Willis angrily accused defense lawyers of spreading lies about her and Mr. Wade.
“I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to take me to trial,” he told a defense attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, at one point. It is the defendants, she said, who are on trial for trying to steal an election.
A disqualification would be a major obstacle in Trump’s prosecution.
If Judge McAfee determines that Ms. Willis has a conflict of interest and deserves disqualification, the case would be reassigned to another Georgia prosecutor, who would have the ability to continue the case exactly as it is and make significant changes. such as adding or dropping charges or defendants, or even dropping the case entirely.
It would be up to a state entity called the Georgia Prosecutors Council to find someone else to take the case. The council’s executive director, Pete Skandalakis, has been criticized for moving slowly in the effort to find a prosecutor to consider whether Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones should also face charges related to the Trump case.
But the case against Trump and the other defendants is a different circumstance, as a grand jury has already handed down indictments. Trump and 18 of his allies were charged last August with extortion in connection with a plot to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election. Four of the defendants have already pleaded guilty.
