‘I’m Not on Trial.’ Trump Prosecutor Fani Willis Defends Herself in Dramatic Hearing.
“You’re confused, you think I’m on trial.”
When Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis took the stand in Atlanta on Thursday, she sparred with lawyers to rebut allegations that her romantic relationship with her deputy should disqualify them from prosecuting Donald Trump for alleged election interference in Georgia.
“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,” she said in response to questions from defense lawyer Ashleigh Merchant, who has led the push for her disqualification.
Her plain-spoken responses, sometimes delivered in a defiant tone, were a sign of the wide latitude she was given to respond as she wished, even as the judge cautioned her not to speak over defense attorneys.
In a courtroom packed with other lawyers and reporters, Willis faced questions about her relationship with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she hired in 2021 to work on the case against the former president and his associates for alleged racketeering.
Their relationship was catapulted into the spotlight of a high-profile case already obsessed with the court of public opinion. Thousands watched hours of testimony broadcast live to the nation.
Willis said that defense lawyers seeking to sideline her had made false and offensive allegations about her history with Wade.
In testimony that was wide-ranging and combative, Willis responded to questions from defense attorneys in great detail. She discussed her father’s advice to keep several months-worth of emergency cash in the house and her preference for Grey Goose vodka over the wine tastings she and Wade shared on vacations.
In August, Trump and 18 co-defendants were indicted on racketeering charges alleging they engaged in a criminal conspiracy to subvert the 2020 presidential election. All defendants pleaded not guilty; four have since taken plea deals.
Co-defendant Mike Roman, represented by Merchant, in early January alleged Willis and Wade benefited financially from Wade’s contract to work on the case, including by taking expensive vacations together. Roman alleged that was a conflict of interest that could have influenced prosecutorial decisions.
Willis acknowledged being romantically involved with Wade for a period of time, but said defense lawyers had lied repeatedly and used innuendo to suggest she had engaged in impropriety when none existed.
The defense lawyers asked Wade and Willis about who paid for the trips—and how they paid.
Wade made sure to pay her half, she said, whether picking up the tab for dinner or funding excursions on cruises she took with Wade, in part because of concerns with his views on gender roles—which she said doomed the relationship.
“A man is not a plan, a man is a companion,” she said. “And so there was tension always in our relationship, which is why I always gave him his money back.”
She said her father taught her to always take cash on dates. “If you’re a woman and you go on a date with a man, you better have $200 in your pocket. So if that man acts up, you can go where you want to go.”
She might not keep as much cash in the house as her dad recommends—“so let’s don’t tell him that,” she said—but she took his advice to heart for vacations. In Belize, she said she handed Wade $2,500. For a short trip to the Napa Valley with him, she thought she took maybe $750, some of which went to a romantic champagne, chocolate and caviar tasting they shared.
“I don’t really like wine, to be honest with you,” she said.
Until Willis arrived in the courtroom, her lawyers had fought to keep her from having to take the stand, making her decision to appear a surprise. She repeatedly said Merchant, the defense attorney, had lied, rarely letting her finish a statement.
“I had some choice words about some things you said that were dishonest in this,” Willis said. “Mr. Wade is a Southern gentleman, me not so much.”
Willis is expected to return to the stand Friday morning at the start of another day of testimony. Judge Scott McAfee said he wouldn’t rule from the bench, but would take the question under advisement after testimony from both sides.
Before Willis took the stand, Wade himself spent hours testifying in the unusual hearing. He also acknowledged the now-former relationship and denied wrongdoing.
The majority of Thursday’s questions related to financials, such as where Wade deposited his checks from Fulton County and why Willis kept so much cash, as the defense attorneys attempted to connect the former couple’s income to the alleged conflict of interest.
Wade, in the middle of a yearslong divorce from his estranged wife, testified that he was not in a relationship with Willis at the time she brought him on to the prosecution team in 2021. Both he and Willis said their romantic ties ended last summer.
“Miss Willis is very, as am I—we’re private people. Our relationship wasn’t a secret, it was just private,” he said on the stand.
“I never tell people at work who I’m dating,” Willis said later.
In a separate hearing in New York on Thursday, a judge ordered Trump’s hush-money trial to begin on March 25. It will be the first of the four criminal cases the former president faces to be heard by a jury.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, unveiled an indictment charging Trump with falsifying business records last April. The indictment accused Trump of orchestrating a scheme to pay hush-money to porn star Stormy Daniels in order to suppress damaging sexual allegations, which he denied, on the eve of the 2016 election.
Justice Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the New York case, also denied Trump’s bid to dismiss the 34 felony counts pending against him. Trump, wearing a navy suit and red tie, sat at the defense table flanked by his lawyers.
Todd Blanche, a lawyer for Trump, told the judge that a trial in the midst of campaign season was something that should never happen in this country. “President Trump is going to now spend the next two months working on this trial instead of on the campaign trail running for president,” Blanche said.
“What’s your legal argument at this point?” asked Merchan.
“That is my legal argument,” Blanche replied.
Trump had argued Bragg’s case should be dismissed because it is politically driven and the alleged crimes occurred more than five years before he was indicted.
Sitting for a six-week trial in Manhattan complicates Trump’s presidential bid and adds to his legal burdens, which include three other prosecutions and a civil fraud case that could put him on the hook to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties. A ruling on the civil matter, in which the New York attorney general alleged Trump inflated his wealth for financial gain, could come as soon as Friday. He also recently was hit with a $83 million judgment for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll.
The Manhattan district attorney’s office has denied being politically motivated, saying that it has brought hundreds of cases involving the same charge in the past 10 years. The office also said the investigation was delayed in part by the Covid-19 pandemic and litigation over a subpoena to Trump’s accounting firm.
Trump’s federal election-interference case in Washington, D.C. was scheduled to be the first trial to go forward, but that case is now on hold while Trump asks the Supreme Court to block a lower court’s ruling that denied him blanket immunity for alleged crimes he committed as president in seeking to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. The Supreme Court could act as soon as this week.
Merchan said he had spoken to the judge overseeing Trump’s federal trial in Washington, D.C. “As you know there are a lot of moving parts in the D.C. case, and really nobody knows what is going to happens and when it’s going to happen,” Merchan said.
During the Manhattan hearing, the lawyers quibbled over the questions prospective jurors may be asked, including about political bumper stickers on their cars, whether they have contributed to campaigns and if they believe the election was stolen.
“We can’t ignore the elephant in the room,” Blanche said. “President Trump is running for president and he is affiliated with the Republican party.”
After the hearing, a single observer in the back clapped, and the former president grinned as he walked out the door.
This story was originally appeared on WSJ.com