Top takeaways from Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis' forceful testimony in contentious hearing on whether she should be removed from Trump Georgia 2020 election case
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis offered a blistering rebuke Thursday against accusations she had an improper romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor in her office. During two hours of testimony, she addressed allegations that underpin an effort to disqualify her and her office from prosecuting the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump.
Appearing on the witness stand, she fielded questions from defense lawyers representing Trump and several of his co-defendants in the sprawling racketeering case related to an alleged scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Wade and Willis' relationship, which was confirmed earlier this month in a court filing by the D.A.'s office, was the subject of an evidentiary hearing Thursday.
It was unclear whether Willis would appear when the proceedings began Thursday morning. Prosecutors in her office initially attempted to quash the subpoena for her testimony. But in the afternoon, she agreed to take the stand, declaring, "I'm ready to go."
The testimony before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee was contentious from the outset, as the district attorney forcefully defended herself and accused Ashleigh Merchant, the lawyer for Trump co-defendant Michael Roman, of being "dishonest" about the claims Merchant made in filings seeking to disqualify Willis.
"You've been intrusive into people's personal lives," Willis said. "You're confused. You think I'm on trial. 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. I object to you getting any personal records of mine."
Willis called implications made by Merchant in court filings about the origins of her relationship with Wade "highly offensive" and said her interests were "contrary to democracy."
The hearing arose from a bid by Roman, a former Republican National Committee staffer, to disqualify Willis and her office and dismiss the indictment on the grounds it is invalid and unconstitutional. Willis will return to the stand for further questioning Friday.
The timing of their relationship and who know about it
Willis took the stand after Wade answered questions under oath for several hours about his marriage and how his association with Willis developed. He described their first meeting at a judicial conference in 2019 and testified about the "personal relationship" that he said began in early 2022, after Willis appointed him to be a special prosecutor in November 2021. Wade said the relationship ended around June, while Willis said they had a "tough conversation" in August, but also said she thought it was likely he said it was over earlier.
"Miss Willis, as am I, we're private people. Our relationship wasn't a secret; it was just private," Wade said, adding that he would not have discussed it publicly.
Willis, too, said she did not share her relationship with Wade with other prosecutors working on the racketeering case involving Trump and did not consider it to be romantic until early 2022.
"That I kept something private that's my private life is not any mystery to anyone," she said. "It's like a woman doesn't have the right to keep her private life private."
Willis provided more details about when the relationship ended and offered some explanation as to why, insinuating there was some tension between her and Wade about how he viewed a woman's role in a relationship.
"It's interesting that we're here about this money," she said. "Mr. Wade is used to women that, as he told me one time, 'the only thing a woman can do for him is make him a sandwich. We would have brutal arguments about the fact that I am your equal. I don't need anything from a man."
Willis said that to her, a man is a "companion," and "not a plan."
She denied that the Fulton County grand jury's indictment of Trump and his co-defendants in August played a role in their break-up and said that in Wade's view, the relationship had ended several months earlier.
The trips they took
Wade acknowledged the couple took two trips together in 2023, one to Belize in March and another to Napa, California, and said they visited Tennessee and Alabama on day trips in 2022. Willis and Wade also traveled to Aruba after they took a cruise with his mother in 2022, he said.
He said he used his business credit card to book the travel to Belize, which was a birthday gift to him, and Aruba. But Willis reimbursed him for the entire Belize trip, and covered the cost of excursions in Napa, Wade testified.
"If you've ever spent any time with Miss Willis, you understand that she's a very independent, proud woman, so she's going to insist that she carries her own weight," Wade told Merchant. "It actually was a point of contention between the two of us. She is going to pay her own way."
Willis confirmed while on the stand that she took a cruise with Wade and his mother in October 2022 and then gifted him the Belize trip for his 50th birthday. The couple also took a cruise together to the Bahamas on New Year's Eve in 2022, Willis disclosed, and she recalled taking day trips to visit her sister in South Carolina and to Charlotte.
"I don't consider him having taken me anyplace," she said, adding that she reimbursed Wade based on the amount he relayed to her. She testified that she paid him in cash on three or four occasions and that she keeps cash in her home.
Asked whether there's any written record or ledger of the money she gave Wade, Willis said no.
Wade said traveling with Willis can be challenging, given the attention she receives and safety concerns, so she limits her transactions. He refuted that there was any effort to conceal their travels, given that the purchases are listed on his credit card statements.
How the trips were paid for
Wade was asked repeatedly about the cash reimbursements from Willis, including what he did with the money he received from her, whether he deposited the money in a bank account or kept it around his home, whether he accompanied Willis to the ATM when she withdrew the cash to cover her portion of the trips, and if he asked Willis for records that would show she would pay him back for the travel. He said he did not deposit the funds, and Wade said he did not question where Willis got the cash to reimburse him.
Asked about the source of the money, Willis said it is the result of the "work, sweat and tears of me." She said she keeps cash on-hand because of advice from her father to have at least six months' worth at a time.
"I always have cash at the house," she said.
During the questioning from Craig Gillen, a lawyer for David Shafer, former Georgia GOP chair and another one of Trump's co-defendants, Wade sought to dispel accusations that he used money he received for his work on the Fulton County case to pay for his trips with Willis.
"To say that I'm paying a credit card statement with funds coming from Fulton County or from the state of Georgia would not be an accurate statement because the funds could have very well come from my private practice," Wade told Gillen.
Later, he told the court that his income decreased "significantly" as a result of his work for the district attorney's office despite spending nearly all of his time in 2022 on the case against Trump involving the integrity of the 2020 election.
Financial affidavits discussed during Wade's testimony indicated that his monthly income from 2022 to 2023 decreased from $14,000 to $9,000, and Wade said he often worked above the cap that set the maximum hours he could bill for.
"There's so many hours here that I worked that I couldn't get paid for," he said. "This is not the type of job that you can walk away from because you're not getting paid for it. There's some professional rules of responsibility to an attorney who's engaged in a case. You have to see it through."
Willis' former friend refutes the timeline of the relationship
The timeline surrounding Wade and Willis' relationship emerged as a crucial issue, as a former longtime friend of Willis, who also worked with her in the District Attorney's Office, contested assertions the couple made in court filings about when their romantic relationship began.
Robin Bryant-Yeartie testified that Willis' romantic relationship with Wade started shortly after they met at the judicial conference — in October or November of 2019 — a revelation that came during separate questioning from Merchant and Steven Sadow, who is representing Trump in the case, about what she observed and knew about Willis' relationship with Wade.
Appearing via Zoom, Yeartie testified that Willis also told her she was engaged in a romantic relationship with Wade in 2020 and 2021, and said she witnessed "hugging, kissing," and "just affection" between the two before November 2021, when Wade was hired by Willis.
Willis lived for a brief time in Yeartie's condo in Hapeville, a city south of Atlanta, moving there in early 2021 due to safety concerns, she said. The district attorney said Wade visited her at the condo on several occasions, typically to pick up food, but never stayed the night.
"That was a very lonely period in my life," Willis said of the time she lived in Yeartie's unit.
Wade, too, acknowledged visiting Willis at the condo before he was hired in November 2021. Asked by Sadow about phone records reflecting that Wade was making phone calls from the area of the condo before his hiring, he said there are a number of nearby places he could have been such as the airport, at restaurants, and visiting the Porsche Experience Center.
Yeartie's testimony appeared to contradict claims from Wade made in an affidavit, in which he claimed his relationship with Willis began in 2022, after he was hired as a special prosecutor to assist in the case against Trump and his co-defendants.
Anna Cross, a lawyer in the Fulton County District Attorney's Office, sought to raise doubts about Yeartie's credibility, asking her several questions about her performance while working for the district attorney and whether she was ever disciplined for poor performance.
Yeartie said she was written up once, and referenced a "situation" in which she was informed that she was going to be terminated if she did not resign. Yeartie said she has not spoken with Willis since her departure from the district attorney's office in 2022.
Cross revealed that she intends to call several witnesses who will challenge Yeartie's credibility when proceedings resume.
Wade reveals he had cancer in 2020
But during cross-examination by Cross, Wade revealed that he was battling cancer in 2020 and part of 2021. Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, his illness kept him from "leaving environments that aren't sterile," Wade said.
"I had health on my mind," he testified.
Willis referenced Wade's diagnosis to push back on questions about whether the two were in contact in 2020 and said that though they had "some contact" that year, any accusations that they were engaged in a romantic relationship then are "preposterous."
"Mr. Wade had a form of cancer that makes your allegations somewhat ridiculous," she told Sadow. "I'm not going to emasculate a Black man … so I don't think we should discuss it further."
Willis' former law partner asserts attorney-client privilege
McAfee presided over the evidentiary hearing to consider Roman's motion to disqualify Willis and her office from prosecuting the 2020 election interference case in Georgia. Roman alleged that Willis had an improper relationship with Wade, paid him more than $650,000 for his work for the D.A.'s office and then benefited financially from the relationship when Wade allegedly took her on cruises and trips.
A filing by the Fulton County D.A.'s office earlier this month confirmed there had been a romantic relationship between Willis and Wade but stated that it began long after Willis hired him. In the affidavit, Wade also denied that he had any financial interest in the outcome of the Georgia election interference case.
Terrence Bradley, Wade's former law partner, was called to testify by Roman's attorney, Merchant. Bradley's attorney, however, objected when Merchant began asking him about the relationship, citing attorney-client privilege because Bradley had for a time represented Wade in his divorce case.
"I was advised by the bar," Bradley said. "I cannot reveal anything that I saw or learned." McAfee commented, "That's a broader representation of attorney-client privilege than I've ever heard."
McAfee said earlier this week that the evidentiary hearing had to proceed because it's "possible that the facts alleged … could result in disqualification" and "to establish the record on those core allegations."
He listed these issues for the hearing: Whether a relationship existed, whether it was romantic, when it formed, whether it continues and any personal benefit conveyed as a result of the relationship. McAfee has also said that some of the arguments made by Roman's attorney are not relevant, like Wade's alleged lack of experience in handling racketeering cases like the Trump case.
"As long as a lawyer has a heartbeat and a bar card," that lawyer's appointment is within the D.A.'s discretion, McAfee said Monday. McAfee has not found violations of Fulton County case law code, which would be relevant to a motion to disqualify a prosecutor for a pending criminal case.
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Melissa Quinn is a politics reporter for CBSNews.com. She has written for outlets including the Washington Examiner, Daily Signal and Alexandria Times. Melissa covers U.S. politics, with a focus on the Supreme Court and federal courts.
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