by A case accusing former President Donald J. Trump and his allies of trying to subvert the 2020 election results in Georgia veered Thursday into the details of prosecutors’ romantic and financial lives. – their sleeping arrangements, vacations and private bank accounts – in an unusual and highly controversial hearing.
Lawyers for Trump and his co-defendants have argued that Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis and the special prosecutor she hired to handle the case, Nathan J. Wade, should be disqualified from the case because of His romantic relationships and financial entanglements had created a conflict of interest. Willis and Wade strongly rejected those allegations in their testimony Thursday, and Willis accused defense attorneys of spreading “lies.”
“You think I’m on trial,” Willis told Ashleigh Merchant, an attorney for Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign official and co-defendant in the case. “These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020. I am not on trial, no matter how much they try to put me on trial.”
The hearing, in Fulton County Superior Court, was a notable turn of events, as prosecutors who accused Trump of trying to overturn the election results were questioned by defense attorneys about their trips together, their breakup and who paid them. their meals and hotels.
Ms. Willis took the stand after her former friend, Robin Bryant-Yeartie, testified that Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade began a romantic relationship in 2019, before Ms. Willis hired him in November 2021 Ms Bryant-Yeartie said it was still happening when she and Ms Willis last spoke in 2022, just before they fell out.
The timeline Ms. Bryant-Yeartie outlined could be critical to the defense’s efforts to derail the case against Trump and his co-defendants. If the defense can establish that Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade began an affair before he was hired, it would help the argument that they should be disqualified from the case because of a conflict of interest.
The defense argues that Ms. Willis had hired Mr. Wade because they would both benefit financially. Mr. Wade has been paid more than $650,000 since he was hired, and defense attorneys say he charged thousands of dollars to his credit cards for vacations with Ms. Willis. She says she reimbursed him in cash for the trips.
Bryant-Yeartie said she had “no doubt” about the timing of the romantic relationship and had seen “hugs, kisses” and “just affection” between Willis and Wade as early as 2019.
But Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade testified that their romance began in early 2022, after Ms. Willis hired him as a special prosecutor, and long after they first met, at a court conference in 2019. Both said their relationship ended in the summer of 2023, around the same time Trump and his co-defendants were impeached.
As he began his testimony, Willis said he found it “extremely offensive” that Merchant had suggested in court documents that she had slept with Wade after they met in 2019, calling it one of several inaccuracies in the defense’s motion to disqualify her. “It’s very offensive when someone lies to you,” she said.
Ms Willis said she had responded with “choice words” after reading defense documents. “Mr. Wade is a southern gentleman, I’m not so much,” Willis said.
Her temper sometimes flared as she was aggressively questioned about her personal life. When Ms Merchant suggested Ms Willis had lived with Mr Wade for a time, Ms Willis shouted: “It’s a lie”, prompting Judge Scott McAfee to order a brief pause in the proceedings.
But he also peppered his testimony with folksy observations about relationships. Explaining the timing of her breakup with Mr. Wade, she said that men think a relationship is over when sex ends, but women don’t consider a relationship to be over until the final “difficult conversation.”
She also said that she and Mr. Wade had often quarreled over their desire to pay their own expenses. She said it was wise for women to keep large sums of cash at home for emergencies, adding that she always carried $200 on a date in case everything went wrong.
“I don’t need anything from a man,” said Mrs. Willis. “A man is not a plan, a man is a partner.”
The hearing will continue Friday with more testimony. Judge McAfee, who is overseeing the Trump case, will hold the hearing to determine whether there is evidence of a conflict of interest. He has said that even “the appearance of” a conflict could lead to disqualification. Trump and other defendants are also seeking to have the cases against them dismissed, although that appears unlikely to happen.
In another Trump case Thursday, a New York judge rejected Trump’s attempt to dismiss criminal charges against him in Manhattan stemming from a hush payment to an adult film star. That judge set the trial date for March 25.
Trump allies have sought to exploit questions surrounding the conduct of Georgia prosecutors. On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee, led by one of Trump’s staunchest allies, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, seized on a claim by defense attorneys that prosecutors had spent money on a tattoo parlor in Belize.
“What tattoo did Nathan Wade get with Fani Willis while on vacation in Belize?” the committee wrote on platform X. “Were your tax dollars used?”
If Wade and Willis are disqualified, it could disrupt or at least delay the case, one of four Trump faces as he tries to secure the Republican presidential nomination and is making the charges against him a centerpiece of his campaign.
If disqualified, another Georgia prosecutor would have to be assigned to handle the sprawling and politically explosive case. That prosecutor could continue the case, make changes (such as adding or dropping charges or defendants), or even drop the case entirely.
Allegations of an inappropriate relationship between prosecutors have no direct bearing on the substance of the case against Trump and 18 other defendants, who were indicted in August on charges of racketeering and other crimes in connection with a plot to subvert the presidential election. results in Georgia and other swing states. Four of the defendants have already pleaded guilty.
To bolster their argument that Willis and Wade had a financial interest in the prosecution, lawyers for Trump and other defendants point to the $650,000 they have paid him and the expensive trips they took. Defense attorneys argue that the money paid to Wade created an incentive for Willis to drag out the case.
Willis, who acknowledged a romantic relationship with Wade in a filing last week, said the costs of her personal trip had been “split approximately equally” between her and Wade, so it did not create a conflict.
Wade said Willis typically reimbursed him in cash for the trip, so there were no receipts. He called Ms. Willis a “strong, independent woman” who insisted that she “was going to pay her own way.” On a trip to California, he said, “everything we did when we got to Napa, she paid for.”
Craig Gillen, an attorney for David Shafer, the former leader of the Georgia Republican Party, who is among those charged in the case, repeatedly pressed Wade on his claim that Willis had reimbursed him in cash for his trips. He asked Mr. Wade if he had records of cash deposits into his bank account. Wade said no.
Ms. Merchant reviewed Mr. Wade’s credit card records and asked him about travel expenses to Belize, Aruba, California’s Napa Valley and Tennessee.
For her part, Ms. Willis said she had paid Mr. Wade for tickets and other travel expenses with cash she kept in her home. Her practice, she said, is to have enough cash on hand to cover six months of expenses, a rule her father had taught her. She added that she had never given Mr. Wade more than $2,500 at a time to reimburse him for trips they had taken together.
“I don’t need anyone to pay my bills,” Ms. Willis said. “The only man who has ever paid my bills in full is my dad.”
