Fani Willis testifies amid questions about cash payments to special prosecutor

Former President Donald Trump may be facing a criminal trial in Georgia, but Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is now in the hot seat.

Willis, who brought the Georgia election subversion case against Trump and allies last August, was called to testify in an evidentiary hearing seeking to disqualify her from the case on Thursday. She took the stand after hours of grilling by her former lover and hired prosecutor, Nathan Wade, who said Thursday their “sexual relationship” began in 2022 and revealed novel claims about “cash payments” he said Willis gave him to reimburse him for the trips he paid for them to take together.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis testifies during a hearing on the Georgia election interference case, Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024, in Atlanta. (Alyssa Pointer/Pool Photo via AP)

“I’ve been very anxious to have this conversation with you today. So I ran to the courtroom,” Willis told Ashleigh Merchant, the defense attorney who pressed her on allegations of an improper relationship between her and Wade, at the start of her testimony.

Merchant’s client, Trump co-defendant Mike Roman, is seeking to have Willis disqualified over allegations that the pair inappropriately gained from each other by being engaged in a romantic affair while Wade was on Willis’s payroll.

Willis snapped at Merchant as the defense attorney began to question Willis during the hearing, saying that questions she was asking were based on lies.

“It’s ridiculous that you lied on Monday and yet here we still are,” Willis said, referring to a hearing in the case earlier this week.

Prior to Willis taking the stand, Wade testified that Willis on multiple occasions reimbursed him with cash for trips that he purchased through his credit card. But when asked by defense attorney Craig Gillen whether he had any records to corroborate his claims, Wade confirmed he did not have a single deposit slip to support his claim that he was paid by Willis.

Willis sought to cast doubt on the lack of any record to support her reimbursements to Wade for travel, including an October 2022 cruise she attended with Wade and his mother.

Wade “calls his travel agent. He calls his cruise agent. They do whatever he tells them he likes on a first-name basis with these people. They do it and then he tells me how much it is, and I’ll give him the money back,” Willis said of her reimbursement patterns for the trips.

Court filings indicated that Wade has been paid more than $650,000 over three years for his work on the Trump election interference investigation. Defense attorneys have said that Willis improperly gained from Wade’s paycheck because he took her on several vacations after receiving taxpayer money.

Anna Cross, an attorney for Willis’s office, ran down Wade’s invoices that itemized payments for his work and even suggested that Wade was underpaid.

Wade at one point said there were “so many hours here that I worked that I couldn’t get paid for.”

The stakes in the case are enormous for Willis, who indicted Trump and 18 other defendants last August in a racketeering case for allegedly attempting to subvert the 2020 election.

Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee’s options include removing Willis and Wade from the case, depending on what they say and their believability about when the relationship began and if Willis financially benefitted from hiring Wade.

Fulton County special prosecutor Nathan Wade testifies during a hearing on the Georgia election interference case, Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024, in Atlanta. (Alyssa Pointer/Pool Photo via AP)

Robin Yeartie, a former friend of Willis, testified she was aware of the romantic relationship and witnessed physical affection between Willis and special prosecutor Wade “soon after” the pair met in 2019, contradicting a sworn affidavit Wade wrote earlier this month saying the relationship began after Willis hired him. Willis appointed Wade to work on the Trump case in November 2021.

“Mr. Wade is my friend right now. Mr. Wade, I would say, has been my friend since 2020. I think he started out as like a mentor and a professional colleague,” Willis said, revealing for the first time that the romantic relationship with Wade ended in “late summer of 2023.”

“Mr. Wade, he’s a man. He probably would probably say [it ended] in June or July. I would say we had a tough conversation in August,” Willis said.

Willis is expected to testify further, but McAfee commenced a break after cross-talk erupted between Willis and Merchant, with Willis yelling, “It is a lie!” after Merchant asked if Wade ever stayed at her home.

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“He never came to my house in 2020. … It is certainly a lie that he lived with me,” Willis said.

The judge issued a caution to Willis that he would strike her testimony if she continued to fail to answer specific questions asked by Merchant.

Watch the live hearing here: