It was one of the most striking developments yet in the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald J. Trump and his allies: The two lead prosecutors took the witness stand Thursday in a daylong hearing, with defense attorneys grilling them about their personal lives.
The defense is arguing that Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, and her office should be disqualified and removed from the prosecution, accusing her of benefiting financially from a relationship with the lead prosecutor that she hired to manage the case, Nathan Wade.
If the judge removes them from the case, it would delay and potentially derail a proceeding that has major implications for the 2024 presidential election. Here are takeaways from the combative hearing:
Defense lawyers focused on spending by the couple.
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The charges that are on your card, she gave you cash for? She did. Traveling with her is a task. You can probably imagine the attention that happens. So for safety reasons, she would limit her transactions.
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In some of the sharpest questioning of the day, defense lawyers pressed Mr. Wade on his finances, attempting to raise doubt about his assertions that Ms. Willis had repaid him with cash for her share of expensive trips while they were dating, including to Belize, Aruba, Tennessee and California.
Mr. Wade called Ms. Willis an “independent strong woman” who insisted that “she is going to pay her own way.” Regarding a trip to California, he said, “everything we did when we got into Napa, she paid for.” But Mr. Wade also said she typically reimbursed him in cash, so there were no receipts available.
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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.
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Ms. Willis forcefully rebutted suggestions that she had not paid her share of the trips, saying that she keeps thousands of dollars in cash secured at her home. “For many many years, I’ve kept money in my house,” she said.
A former friend challenged the timeline of the relationship.
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So you had a chance to see them interact together on a personal level? Yes. And so from everything that you saw, heard, witnessed, it’s your understanding that they were in a romantic relationship beginning in 2019? Yes. You have no doubt that their romantic relationship was in effect from 2019 until the last time you spoke with her? No doubt. O.K. And that’s based on your personal observations and speaking with them and seeing them together and things like that?. Yes.
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Defense attorneys have said that the relationship between the two prosecutors started before Mr. Wade was hired in November 2021. Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade have disputed that, saying the relationship started in early 2022.
Their timeline was disputed Thursday by testimony from a former friend of Ms. Willis, Robin Bryant-Yeartie, who said she had “no doubt” that the two had started a romantic relationship earlier than they have claimed.
But Mr. Wade, who testified for several hours, stood firm in the assertion that the relationship began only after he was hired. He also revealed that it had ended in summer 2023.
Fani Willis pushed back hard at the defense lawyers.
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2020. Did Mr Wade ever visit you at a place that you resides? He had never been to my home in South Fulton. 2020 was before I knew that a phone call was going to be made. And I going to have to abandon my home. As a result thereof, he never visited, lived at, came to or has seen South Fulton. You qualify that with your home in South Fulton. That’s where I lived in 2020. in 2020 did he ever visit you at a place that you resided? O.K I don’t understand. You’re going to have to give me that. In 2020, I lived in South Fulton. That’s the only place I lived in South Fulton. That’s before I had to abandon my home, judge. And at my home in South Fulton, miss. I never. He never came there. O.K., so if you don’t come someplace, you can’t live there. Ms. Willis, I’m going to have to caution you. That’s going to be my first time. I have to caution, we have to listen to the questions as asked. And if this happens again and again, I’m going to have no choice but to strike your testimony.
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The sparring between Ms. Willis and the defense lawyers grew so tense at various points that the presiding judge, Scott McAfee, warned the parties several times to limit their answers in order to preserve decorum.
Ms. Willis angrily accused defense lawyers of spreading lies about her and Mr. Wade.
“I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial,” she told a defense attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, at one point. It is the defendants, she said, who are on trial for trying to steal an election.
A disqualification would be a major roadblock in the Trump prosecution.
If Judge McAfee determines that Ms. Willis has a conflict of interest, and that it merits disqualification, the case would then be reassigned to another Georgia prosecutor, who would have the ability to continue with the case exactly as it is, make major changes — such as adding or dropping charges or defendants — or to even drop the case altogether.
It would be up to a state entity called the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia to find someone else to take up the case. The council’s executive director, Pete Skandalakis, has been criticized for moving slowly in the effort to find a prosecutor to consider whether Georgia’s lieutenant governor, Burt Jones, should also face charges related to the Trump case.
But the case against Mr. Trump and the other defendants is a different circumstance, since a grand jury has already handed down charges. Mr. Trump and 18 of his allies were charged last August with racketeering in connection with a plot to subvert the 2020 presidential election results. Four of the defendants have already pleaded guilty.