D.A. Denies Improper Relationship With Special
Trump Prosecutor
Defense lawyers argue a romance between the Fulton
County district attorney, Fani T. Willis, and the special prosecutor she hired
to handle the election interference case in Georgia should disqualify them.
TRANSCRIPT
Georgia Prosecutor Fani Willis Delivers Tense
Testimony
The Fulton County district attorney, who is
overseeing the state’s prosecution of Donald J. Trump, was combative and
accused the defense of spreading lies.
“You and Mr. Wade met in October 2019 at a
conference?” “That is correct, and I think in one of your motions you tried to
implicate I slept with him at that conference, which I find to be extremely
offensive.” “Your office objected to us getting Delta records for flights that
you may have taken when Mr. Wade.” “Well, no, no, no, look. I object to you
getting records. You’ve been intrusive into people’s personal lives. You’re
confused. You think I’m on trial. 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. It’s interesting that we’re here about this money. Mr. Wade is used to
women that, as he told me one time, the only thing a woman can do for him is
make him a sandwich. We would have brutal arguments about the fact that I am
your equal. I don’t need anything from a man. A man is not a plan. A man is a
companion. And so there was tension always in our relationship, which is why I
would give him his money back. I don’t need anybody to foot my bills. The only
man who’s ever foot my bills completely is my daddy.” “Mr. Wade visit you at
the place you laid your head.” “When?” “Has he ever visited you at the place
you laid your head?” “So let’s be clear, because you’ve lied and this – Let me
tell you which one you lied in. Right here. I think you lied right here. No,
no, no, no. This is the truth. And it is a lie. It is a lie.” “Ms. Willis.”
“Mr. Sadow, thank you. We’re going to take five minutes. Be back in five.”
By Danny
Hakim, Richard Fausset and Michael Levenson
Published
Feb. 15, 2024
Updated
Feb. 16, 2024, 12:27 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/15/us/politics/trump-georgia-willis-wade-hearing.html
A case
charging former President Donald J. Trump and his allies with trying to subvert
the 2020 election results in Georgia took a detour on 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
Mr. Trump and his co-defendants have argued that the Fulton County district
attorney, Fani T. Willis, and the special prosecutor she hired to manage the
case, Nathan J. Wade, should be disqualified from the case because their
romantic and financial entanglements had created a conflict of interest. Ms.
Willis and Mr. Wade forcefully rejected those accusations in testimony on
Thursday, with Ms. Willis accusing the defense lawyers of spreading “lies.”
“You think
I’m on trial,” Ms. 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 Mr. 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.
Ms. Willis
took the stand after her former friend, Robin Bryant-Yeartie, testified that
Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade began a romantic relationship in 2019, before Ms.
Willis hired him in November 2021. Ms. Bryant-Yeartie said that it was still
going on when she and Ms. Willis last spoke in 2022, just before they had a
falling out.
The
timeline that Ms. Bryant-Yeartie outlined could be pivotal for the defense’s
efforts to derail the case against Mr. Trump and his co-defendants. If the
defense can establish that Ms. Willis and Mr. 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 Ms. Willis had hired Mr. Wade because they would both benefit
financially. Mr. 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 Ms. Willis. She says she reimbursed him in cash for the trips.
Ms.
Bryant-Yeartie said she had “no doubt” about the timing of the romantic
relationship and had seen “hugging, kissing,” and “just affection” between Ms.
Willis and Mr. Wade as early as 2019.
But Ms.
Willis and Mr. Wade both testified that their romance began in early 2022,
after Ms. 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 Mr. Trump and his
co-defendants were indicted.
A fourth
criminal case. Former President Donald Trump was indicted for a fourth time on
Aug. 14, this time over what prosecutors in Atlanta described as his efforts to
unlawfully undo his election loss in Georgia in 2020. The indictment includes
13 charges against Trump, as well as charges against 18 of his allies. Here are
some key takeaways:
Trump was
charged under Georgia’s RICO Act. Prosecutors charged Trump and his allies
under the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, which
allows them to link various crimes committed by different people by arguing
that they were acting together for a common criminal goal. At its heart, the
statute requires prosecutors to prove the existence of an “enterprise” and a
“pattern of racketeering activity.”
The charges
reach far beyond Trump. Among the 18 Trump allies charged in the case are
Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and lawyer for Trump, and Mark
Meadows, the former White House chief of staff. Also charged are several more
lawyers who are accused of working to try to overturn the election, including
John Eastman and Sidney Powell.
The charges
fall into several baskets. Several of the individual counts stem from false
claims of election fraud that Giuliani and two other Trump lawyers made at
legislative hearings in December 2020. Another batch of charges concerns a plan
to vote for a false slate of pro-Trump electors. A third raft of charges
accuses several Trump allies of conspiring to steal voter data and tamper with
voting equipment in Coffee County, Ga.
As her
testimony started, Ms. Willis said she found it “extremely offensive” that Ms.
Merchant had insinuated in court filings that she had slept with Mr. Wade after
they met in 2019, calling it one of several inaccuracies in the defense’s
motion to disqualify her. “It’s highly offensive when someone lies on you,” she
said.
Ms. Willis
said she had responded with “choice words” after reading the defense filings.
“Mr. Wade is a Southern gentleman — me not so much,” Ms. Willis said.
Her temper
sometimes flared while under aggressive questioning about her personal life.
When Ms. Merchant suggested that Ms. Willis had lived with Mr. Wade for a time,
Ms. 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 Mr. 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 Mr. 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 and added that she always carried $200 on a date in case it went
badly.
“I don’t
need anything from a man,” Ms. Willis said. “A man is not a plan — a man is a
companion.”
The hearing
will continue on Friday with further testimony. Judge 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. Mr. Trump and other defendants are also seeking
to have the cases against them dismissed, although that seems unlikely to
happen.
In another
Trump case on Thursday, a New York judge
rejected Mr. Trump’s bid to throw out criminal charges against him in
Manhattan stemming from a hush-money payment to an adult film star. That judge
set a trial date of March 25.
Mr. Trump’s
allies have tried to exploit the questions surrounding the Georgia prosecutors’
conduct. On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee, led by one of Mr. Trump’s
staunchest allies, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, seized on a claim by the
defense lawyers that the prosecutors had spent money at a tattoo parlor in
Belize.
“What
tattoo did Nathan Wade get with Fani Willis while on their vacation to Belize?”
the committee wrote on the X platform. “Were your tax dollars used?”
If Mr. Wade
and Ms. Willis are disqualified, it could upend or at least delay the case, one
of four Mr. 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 Mr. 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.
To bolster
their argument that Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade had a financial interest in the
prosecution, lawyers for Mr. Trump and other defendants point to the $650,000
he has been paid and the expensive trips they took. Defense lawyers argue that
the money paid to Mr. Wade created an incentive for Ms. Willis to prolong the
case.
Ms. Willis,
who acknowledged a romantic relationship with Mr. Wade in a filing last week,
has said that the costs of their personal travel had been “divided roughly
evenly” between her and Mr. Wade, so it did not create a conflict.
Mr. Wade
said that Ms. Willis had typically reimbursed him in cash for their travel, so
there were no receipts. He called Ms. Willis an “independent strong woman” who
insisted that she was “going to pay her own way.” On a trip to California, he
said, “everything we did when we got into Napa, she paid for.”
Craig
Gillen, a lawyer for David Shafer, the former head of the Georgia Republican
Party, who is among the defendants in the case, repeatedly pressed Mr. Wade on
his assertion that Ms. Willis had reimbursed him in cash for their trips. He
asked Mr. Wade if he had records of cash deposits to his bank account. Mr. Wade
said he did not.
Ms.
Merchant went through Mr. Wade’s credit card records, questioning him on
expenses for trips to Belize, Aruba, the Napa Valley in California and
Tennessee.
For her
part, Ms. Willis said she had paid Mr. Wade back for tickets and other travel
expenses from cash that she kept in her home. It is her practice, she said, to
keep enough cash on hand to cover six months of expenses, a rule her father had
taught her. She added that she had never given Mr. Wade more than $2,500 at a
time to reimburse him for their trips together.
“I don’t
need anybody to foot my bills,” Ms. Willis said. “The only man who’s ever foot
my bills completely is my daddy.”
Danny Hakim
is an investigative reporter. He has been a European economics correspondent
and bureau chief in Albany and Detroit. He was also a lead reporter on the team
awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News. More about Danny Hakim
Richard
Fausset, based in Atlanta, writes about the American South, focusing on
politics, culture, race, poverty and criminal justice. More about Richard
Fausset
Michael
Levenson joined The Times in December 2019. He was previously a reporter at The
Boston Globe, where he covered local, state and national politics and news. More about Michael Levenson
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário