The Fani Willis and Nathan Wade testimony today was crazy. You had the spectacle of the Fulton Co. DA, who is prosecuting President Donald Trump, storming into the courtroom and demanding to testify, against the objection of her attorney.
We learned she prefers Grey Goose, whereas her lover-appointee Wade prefers wine. They went on a cruise with his mom. She thinks one of the Trump case defense attorneys is a liar. She basically said Wade is a misogynist who thinks the only thing a woman could do for him is make a sandwich.
She doesn’t want to “emasculate a black man.” They disagree when they broke up because he’s a “man” so he probably dates it to when they last had sex whereas she dates it to having a hard conversation and her independent streak. Her 50th birthday was depressing. She can’t answer a simple yes/no answer without belligerently trying to control the proceeding.
Yes, it was that crazy. The judge let Willis dominate, hector, sidetrack, and filibuster. Usually, judges demand that people on witness stands answer the questions posed by attorneys, not give lectures. But the soapbox didn’t really do Willis any favors. It showcased a rash, emotional, and arrogant prosecutor trying to wriggle out of problems of her own making.
Within all of the bizarre sideshows, serious angles emerged. Here are the 8 most important revelations in Thursday’s Fani Willis and Nathan Wade hearing.
1. Willis’s own former friend says Willis and Wade lied to the court about when their relationship began
https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1758155492952613353
It’s not the crime; it’s the cover-up, as the old saying goes. When you filter away all of the later blustering from Willis on the stand (an attempt to change the headlines?), the top takeway was the testimony of Robin Bryant Yeartie.
The morning started out with Robin Bryant-Yeartie taking the stand and testifying that, actually, Willis and Wade started dating in 2019. Willis’s college friend said she saw them hugging and kissing and that Willis, who took over renting Bryant-Yeartie’s condo, told her this.
This matters because Wade and Willis told the court in a filing, and repeated under oath Thursday, that they started dating in early 2022. This date is important because it’s AFTER Willis named Wade special prosecutor in November 2021. Although Willis denied the relationship began in 2019, she admitted being alone with Wade in Bryant-Yeartie’s condo before Wade was appointed special prosecutor in the Trump case in November 2021. She also admitted being friends with Bryant-Yeartie for years, although Bryant-Yeartie’s friendship with Willis ruptured when Willis, for unclear reasons, told her to resign from the DA’s office or she’d be fired.
This begs the question of why long-time friends of Willis’s keep ending up working for her.
Terrence Bradley, Wade’s former law partner, was expected to testify about the timeline of the Wade-Willis relationship too. However, Bradley is asserting attorney-client privilege because he once acted as Wade’s divorce attorney. The judge indicated that he may be applying too broad of an application to this, which creates a bit of an ominous angle for Willis and Wade.
Nathan Wade’s divorce attorney refuses to answer when Wade & Fani Willis’ relationship began
Judge: “He’s taking the position that he’s not willing to share any information that Mr. Wade ever told him. That’s a broader definition of attorney client privilege than I’d ever heard” pic.twitter.com/VxGRs51enN
— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) February 15, 2024
More witnesses are expected Friday.
2. Nathan Wade & Fani Willis say Willis reimbursed him in cash
https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1758173375388586043
The crux of the accusations is that Wade and Willis should be disqualified because Willis financially benefited from the public money she flowed to Wade by naming him special prosecutor.
Although they admit going on trips together that Wade put on his business credit card, both said that Willis paid him back in cash, although they admitted she didn’t pay this back exactly. For example, Willis said that she roughly paid the same amount Wade paid for a trip to Napa Valley because she paid for wine excursions they went on, whereas he paid for her airfare. So the reimbursements were handled pretty loosely.
She claimed she keeps a lot of cash lying around her house. The attorneys pointed out she had an active tax lien at the time she apparently had a hoard of cash in her house. She explained that she also went shopping despite having a tax lien.
“If you’re a woman and you go on a date with a man, you better have $200 in your pocket. So if that man acts up, you can go where you want to go,” Willis explained.
How convenient that the reimbursements are in untraceable cash.
Also note: Even if you believe Willis that she did not financially benefit from the public money she funneled to Wade as special prosecutor, is it possible she funneled it to him – and chose him – because she wanted to forge a romantic relationship with him and make him indebted to her?
3. Nathan Wade & Fani Willis can’t prove these cash reimbursements
https://twitter.com/charliekirk11/status/1758196885196800227
Both Wade and Willis admitted that they did not keep proof of these cash reimbursements. Willis said she has some debit card transactions showing she paid for some things on various trips. But they offer no proof other than their word that everything Wade paid for was reimbursed in cash.
4. They went on at least 6 trips while Wade was acting as Trump’s special prosecutor
https://twitter.com/ULTRA_MAJESTY/status/1758234582044782597
Both Wade and Willis admit they went on two cruises together (one with his mom), a trip to Belize (for his birthday), and a trip to the California wine country. Wade paid up front for some of this. Willis, again, claims she paid him back in cash.
They also admit they went to Tennessee (although Willis said they might have spent the night and Wade characterized it as a day trip), and they went to South Carolina for lunch.
5. Fani Willis admits that Nathan Wade paid for her meals, but she didn’t disclose it in ethics reports
https://twitter.com/SaraHigdon_/status/1758270041999409640
Lawyers for Trump and other defendants pressed Willis about not disclosing in required ethics reports that she received more than $100 in gifts from Wade.
Willis made a semantics argument; she claimed she didn’t receive any gifts from Wade because she reimbursed him (in cash) for trips he paid for with his business credit card. However, she also admitted that he paid for dinner and lunch for her, and that this probably exceeded $100. Somehow she did not think this is a “gift.”
6. Nathan Wade’s testimony about his divorce interrogatories insults the intelligence
https://twitter.com/MS_Sambo_/status/1758161068491252188
Nathan Wade’s testimony, under oath, in interrogatories in his divorce (including in 2023) contradicts some of his testimony in a sworn affidavit he filed with the court in this motion hearing, according to some of the defense attorneys.
That begs the question of whether he lied under oath in the interrogatories.
For example, he said in the interrogatories that he had no receipts showing travel with a woman not his wife and that he didn’t have a romantic relationship with another woman during his marriage. However, he’s admitted (in an affidavit and on the witness stand) that he started dating Willis in 2022 (before his divorce was final) and paid for trips for her.
He tried to explain this discrepancy by saying that credit card receipts that have emerged showing he paid for Willis’s travel were not receipts at all but were “statements.” He said he didn’t have a romantic relationship with another women during his marriage because, even though he was still married when he started dating Willis, his marriage broke irretrievably in 2015. Got that?
7. Willis kept it from her prosecution team that she was dating a member of the team
When Willis and Wade started dating, she didn’t tell the other prosecutors on the Trump prosecution team.
Wade signed a new contract after 2021.
8. Fani Willis says she kept some money she took out for her first campaign
https://twitter.com/RealNewsApp/status/1758290810351886369
If the money came from her personal finances in the first place, this is probably not a big deal. But it’s raising some eyebrows. Similarly, look for questions about how Wade did his taxes, in lieu of the cash reimbursements and lack of receipts, to emerge.
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