(The Hill) Tensions exploded Thursday during a frenetic hearing to determine whether Fulton County’s district attorney’s office should be disqualified from continuing its 2020 election interference prosecution of former President Trump and his allies due to a relationship between top prosecutors on the case.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) suddenly took the witness stand to defend her once-romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, clashing face-to-face with defense attorneys whom she and Wade both accused of lying.
The defense, spurred by a motion filed by Trump campaign operative Michael Roman last month, claims Willis and Wade’s relationship renders the 98-page racketeering indictment “fatally defective” and has asked a Georgia judge to boot them from the case.
With her reputation on the line, Willis minced no words while attempting to persuade Judge Scott McAfee that no ethical lines were crossed — and defense attorneys left no stone unturned as they sought to prove otherwise.
Here are five of the big revelations from Thursday’s explosive disqualification hearing.
Willis calls allegations a ‘lie’
After allegations of a romance between the prosecutors surfaced, the district attorney’s office stayed silent for weeks. But on Thursday Willis took the witness stand with gloves up.
At the start of her testimony, she railed against Roman attorney Ashleigh Merchant for filing the “dishonest” motion to disqualify the district attorney, accusing her of spreading “lies” and implying she slept with Wade “the first day [she] met with him.”
“When someone lies on you — it’s highly offensive,” Willis said after McAfee asked her to stay on topic with the questioning.
Another line of questioning about whether Willis and Wade “cohabitated” drew outrage from the district attorney, who grabbed a stack of exhibits in both hands, shaking them and repeating: “It is a lie. It is a lie.”
She accused Merchant of intruding in her personal life — and reminded the defense attorney she’s not on trial.
“These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020,” she said, waving out at the crowd. “I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial.”
Willis, Wade stand firm on relationship timeline
Both Willis and Wade testified that their relationship began in early 2022, some time between February and April, but both struggled when asked for precise dates of when the relationship started and ended.
“It’s not like when you’re in grade school and you send a little letter and it says, ‘Will you be my girlfriend,’ and you check it,” Willis said. “I don’t know the day that we started seeing each other, but it was early ‘22, is my recollection.”
Wade, when on the stand before Willis and asked similar questions, joked that as a man, he was bad when it came to dates.
The prosecutors both testified that they met at a 2019 judicial conference and bonded as jurists of color, but not romantically, instead starting a mentor-like relationship. Wade recalled that their communication increased as time passed, but that he would not have been dating Willis any earlier than 2022 because he was battling cancer amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“That prevented me from pretty much leaving environments that aren’t sterile,” Wade said, referring to 2020 and part of 2021.
The pair did differ on when their relationship ended.
Wade testified that they stopped dating in summer 2023 — possibly June, though he was unsure of the date. Willis offered a slightly different timeline, testifying that she considered their relationship over by August.
“He’s a man; he probably would say June or July,” Willis said. “I would say we had a tough conversation in August.”
“Men end relationships with the physical intimacy; women end relationships when that tough conversation takes place,” she added.
Despite their romantic relationship running its course, both Wade and Willis described each other as “good friends” and said their relationship was strengthened by the “attacks” they faced in Roman’s motion.
“I think that you have cemented that we’ll be friends to the day we die,” Willis told Merchant, one of the defense attorneys.
Ex-friend contradicts span of romance
