DA denies improper relationship with special Trump prosecutor

A case charging former President Donald Trump and his allies with trying to subvert the 2020 election results in Georgia took a detour Thursday into the details of the prosecutors’ romantic and financial lives — their sleeping arrangements, vacations and private bank accounts — in an unusual and highly contentious hearing.

Lawyers for Trump and his co-defendants have argued that the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, and the special prosecutor she hired to manage the case, Nathan Wade, should be disqualified from the case because their romantic and financial entanglements had created a conflict of interest. Willis and Wade forcefully rejected those accusations in testimony Thursday, with Willis accusing the defense lawyers of spreading “lies.”

“You think I’m on trial,” Willis told Ashleigh Merchant, a lawyer for Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign official who is a co-defendant in the case. “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.”

The hearing, in Fulton County Superior Court, was a remarkable turn of events, as the prosecutors who have accused Trump of trying to invalidate election results were grilled by the defense lawyers about the trips they took together, their breakup and who paid for their meals and hotels.

Willis took the stand after her former friend, Robin Bryant-Yeartie, testified that Willis and Wade began a romantic relationship in 2019, before Willis hired him in November 2021. She said that it continued until she and Willis last spoke in 2022, just before they had a falling out.

The timeline that Bryant-Yeartie outlined could be pivotal for the defense’s efforts to derail the case against Trump and his co-defendants. If the defense can establish that Willis and Wade began a romance before he was hired, it would help the argument that they should be disqualified from the case for a conflict of interest.

The defense is arguing Willis had hired Wade because they would both benefit financially. Wade has been paid more than $650,000 since being hired, and defense lawyers say he charged thousands of dollars to his credit cards for vacations with 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 “hugging, kissing,” and “just affection” between Willis and Wade as early as 2019.

But Willis and Wade both testified that their romance began in early 2022, after Willis had hired him as a special prosecutor, and well after they had first met, at a judicial conference in 2019. Both said that their relationship ended in the summer of 2023, around the same time Trump and his co-defendants were indicted.

Willis’ temper sometimes flared while under aggressive questioning about her personal life. When Merchant suggested that Willis had lived with Wade for a time, Willis shouted “It’s a lie,” prompting the judge, Scott McAfee, to order a short break in the proceedings.

But she also peppered her testimony with folksy observations about relationships. Explaining the timing of her breakup with Wade, she said men think a relationship ends when sexual relations do, but women don’t consider a relationship to be over until the final “tough conversation.”

She also said that she and Wade had often fought over her desire to pay her own way. It was wise, she said, for women to keep large sums of cash at home for emergencies; she added that she always carried $200 on a date in case it went badly.

“I don’t need anything from a man,” Willis said. “A man is not a plan — a man is a companion.”

The hearing will continue Friday with further testimony. McAfee, who is overseeing the Trump case, is holding the hearing to determine if 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 seems unlikely to happen.

If Wade and Willis are disqualified, it could upend or at least delay the case, one of four Trump is facing as he tries to secure the Republican presidential nomination and is making the charges against him a central element of his campaign.

Another Georgia prosecutor would have to be assigned to handle the sprawling and politically explosive case in the event of disqualification. That prosecutor could continue the case, make changes — such as adding or dropping charges or defendants — or even drop the case altogether.

The allegations of an improper relationship between the prosecutors have no direct bearing on the merits 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.

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