5 takeaways from dramatic Fani Willis-Nathan Wade hearing in Georgia Trump case

A tense hearing on Thursday was held to decide if the district attorney’s office in Fulton County should be barred from prosecuting former US President Donald Trump and his associates for alleged 2020 election tampering due to a relationship between key prosecutors involved in the case.
Fani Willis, the District Attorney for Fulton County (D), unexpectedly took the witness stand to defend her close relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.
Willis, knowing that her reputation was at stake, did not hold back in her endeavor to convince Judge Scott McAfee that no moral boundaries had been exceeded.
Driven by a motion that Trump campaign operative Michael Roman filed last month, the defence has sought a Georgia judge to remove Willis and Wade from the case on the grounds that their association makes the 98-page racketeering indictment “fatally defective.”
Here are the top five takeaways from the dramatic disqualification hearing on Thursday:
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The district attorney’s office remained silent for weeks following the revelation of alleged romantic involvement between the prosecutors. However, Willis put on her gloves and went to the witness stand on Thursday.
She first denounced Roman lawyer Ashleigh Merchant for submitting the “dishonest” move to remove the district attorney from office. She called Merchant a “liar” for implying that she had slept with Wade “the first day [she] met with him.”
After McAfee requested her to keep the questions on subject, Willis remarked, “When someone lies on you — it’s highly offensive.”
She informed the defence counsel that she is not on trial and accused Merchant of interfering in her private life.
She gestured to the audience and stated, “These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020.” “I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial.”
When pressed for specific dates of the beginning and termination of their relationship, Willis and Wade both testified that it started in early 2022, sometime between February and April.
Willis stated, “It’s not like when you’re in grade school and you send a little letter and it says, ‘Will you be my girlfriend,’ and you check it.” “I don’t know the day that we started seeing each other, but it was early ‘22, is my recollection.”
During his deposition before Willis, Wade made light of the fact that, as a male, he wasn’t very good at going on dates.
The pair, however, made different claims regarding when their relationship ended.
Wade stated in court that they broke up in the summer of 2023—possibly in June, though he couldn’t pinpoint the exact month. In her testimony, Willis provided a somewhat different timetable, stating that by August, she thought their relationship was finished.
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Testimony from one of Willis’s former colleagues jeopardized the relationship timeline that both Wade and Willis provided.
Robin Yeartie, a college friend of Willis’, stated in her testimony on Thursday that the district attorney and Wade got into a romantic connection in 2019, just after a meeting in municipal court — three years before the prosecution claimed they started dating.
Although they used to “party together in college,” Willis informed the judge that she and Yeartie were no longer pals.
“You have no doubt that their romantic relationship was in effect from 2019 until the last time you spoke with her?” Merchant asked Yeartie who testified that she saw Wade and Willis hugging and kissing before November 2021..
“No doubt,” she replied.
The Roman’s disqualification motion centres around whether Willis hired Wade during their romantic relationship and has since profited financially from his work.
Defence lawyers cited Willis and Wade visits to Aruba and Belize, two Bahamas cruises, and other trips in court filings, claiming Wade paid for the trips. According to Willis and Wade, they split their travel costs “rather evenly.”
Wade, however, stated that Willis had always made his payments in cash, and he only had one receipt to support this assertion. One defendant in the gallery, David Shafer, laughed out at the comment, which prompted the judge to chastise him and threaten to remove him if he made any more outbursts.
Willis was characterised by the special prosecutor as a “independent, proud woman” who insisted on covering her own expenses and only used cash for “safety reasons,” not to hide the transactions. He added that he failed to deposit the money Willis gave him for their joint travel expenses.
When asked about the money, Willis testified that she had always kept a cache because, as a child, her father had taught her that a woman should always have at least six months’ worth of cash.
“I always have cash at the house … all my life,” she said.
Following the conclusion of their testimony, a defense lawyer made an observation from the gallery claiming that Willis and Wade’s cash system failed to “pass the smell test.”
Wade allegedly stated under oath in divorce documents that he had no outside relationships during his marriage, according to Merchant, who initially discovered the romantic allegations between Willis and Wade in court filings. This is in stark contrast to the affidavit Wade filed earlier this month acknowledging his relationship with Willis.
Merchant claimed Wade later changed the interrogatory in his divorce case to state a right to privacy.
Wade, however, claimed that his marriage was “irretrievably broken” by 2015 and that any relationship with Willis did not go against his sworn declarations.
“Because my marriage was irretrievably broken, I was free to have a relationship,” he said.