The Fani Willis hearing: What we learned
ATLANTA — Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee has a lot to consider as he decides whether to disqualify District Attorney Fani Willis from prosecuting the election interference case against former President Donald Trump and 14 others.
Attorneys for numerous defendants have sought to disqualify Willis and the Fulton DA’s office in part because of her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, the private attorney she contracted with to oversee the case. The defendants say Willis personally profited because Wade spent some of the hundreds of thousands of dollars he earned from Fulton County on trips with Willis to such locations as Belize, Aruba and Napa Valley. Willis and Wade deny they’ve done anything improper.
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McAfee heard two days of testimony – some of it contradictory – last week as he sought to determine whether the Willis-Wade relationship poses a conflict of interest that should remove the DA’s office from the case. Before the hearings, the judge laid out what he hoped to learn:
Here’s what we learned — and didn’t — from last week’s hearings.
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A PRIVATE ROMANCE
Going into the hearing, Wade and Willis had already acknowledged in a court filing from the DA’s office that they were in a personal relationship. On the stand last week, the prosecutors confirmed they were romantically involved. But Wade testified he did not disclose their romance to other members of the prosecution team.
“We’re private people,” he testified. “Our relationship wasn’t a secret. It was just private.”
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WHEN THE ROMANCE BEGAN
Wade testified he met Willis at a judicial conference in October 2019. In the months that followed, she sought his advice on municipal court matters and on running for office (she was elected DA in 2020). Willis hired Wade to oversee the election interference case in November 2021 after being turned down by former Gov. Roy Barnes and Gabe Banks, a defense attorney and onetime prosecutor.
McAfee heard conflicting accounts of when Willis and Wade’s romance began. Robin Bryant Yeartie, a former friend and colleague of Willis’, testified that the DA told her she and Wade were romantically involved before Willis hired him to oversee the case. Yeartie said she saw the couple hug, kiss and be affectionate just weeks after they met in 2019.
Wade and Willis testified their romantic relationship began in early 2022 – he said “around March,” she said “between February and April.”
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FINANCIAL BENEFIT
The defense attorneys did not conclusively establish that Willis had benefitted financially from hiring Wade. But it wasn’t for lack of trying.
They quizzed Wade about the invoices he submitted for payment – he’s earned more than $728,000 for his work on the election case.
Defense attorneys highlighted the thousands of dollars he spent on plane tickets and hotels for trips with Willis. Wade and Willis testified that she reimbursed him for the trips – either through cash or by paying for wine tastings and other activities while they traveled. Wade acknowledged he had no documentation of the cash reimbursements.
In testimony, Willis’ father, John Clifford Floyd III, backed up her story that he advised her to keep large amounts of cash on hand – a lesson he said he learned after a restaurant refused to accept his American Express card, a credit card or a traveler’s check.
