In one furious outburst, Fani Willis is angrily pushing back at what she says are personal attacks on her and Nathan Wade, and says opposing attorneys should focus their attention elsewhere.
Asked if she objected to records of flights she took with Wade being demanded, she said:
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.
Willis is also defending Wade’s character, saying they are “good friends”.
The judge has ordered another short break.
We’re closing the US politics blog now after what was an extraordinary day, on two fronts, in the various legal cases against Donald Trump.
In Georgia, the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis gave testimony in a fiery first day of a misconduct hearing that could see her removed from the election interference case against the former president. “I’m not on trial here,” she insisted in one of many angry exchanges over her affair with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.
Willis tussled with Trump lawyer Steve Sadow over the “tough conversation” she had with Nathan Wade ending their relationship and, crucially, when it occurred. Telling Sadow “you don’t have to yell at me,” Willis said their relationship was over before she indicted Trump last August.
Willis insisted she paid Wade back for money he spent on two cruises and other trips he took with her in 2022 and early 2023.
Willis accused Ashleigh Merchant, a lawyer for another Trump co-defendant, of telling lies about her in another heated exchange.
Wade also took the stand, confirming their relationship ended last summer.
Robin Yeartie, a former friend of Willis who worked in her office, testified the relationship began before Wade was hired.
In New York, a judge set a 25 March start date for Trump’s trial on charges he made illegal hush-money payments to adult movie star Stormy Daniels, and Playboy model Karen McDougal.
The two stories dominated the day.
Also today:
Join us again tomorrow, when we’ll have more from the second day of the Fani Willis misconduct hearing.
A fiery first day of the misconduct case against Fani Willis, in which a judge will decide if the Fulton county district attorney will be disqualified from prosecuting the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump, has just wrapped up for the day.
The final exchange was Harry MacDougald, lawyer for Trump co-defendant Jeffrey Clark, asking Willis about any financial gifts above $100 she received from Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she hired for the case, and with whom she had a romantic relationship.
Willis says she never received any, other than him paying for dinner. She says she reimbursed him for everything, and pushed back when McDougald said there was nothing to prove she had withdrawn any cash to do so.
“That’s not accurate,” Willis replied.
It was a tamer exchange than those that preceded it. In one particularly hostile moment, Willis accused an attorney of repeatedly lying about her, and in another furiously exclaimed: “I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial.”
Judge McAfee has told all parties to reconvene at 9am ET on Friday. It’s been quite a day.
Steve Sadow’s questioning of Fani Willis has now concluded, and the judge overseeing the misconduct hearing, Scott McAfee, says there’s time for a few more questions before he wraps the hearing up for the day.
Next up is Allyn Stockton, lawyer for Trump’s co-defendant and former attorney Rudy Giuliani, who opened with questions about travel Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade might have made together, including trips to Washington DC that Willis has already denied took place.
Next, he’s wondering about Willis’s hiring practices and contract-issuing procedures as Fulton county district attorney.
It’s not yet clear where he’s going with it, but he seems to be suggesting there might be something improper about the status of employment of two of Wade’s colleagues who reportedly did work for her Willis’s office.
Steve Sadow and Fani Willis are now tussling over the “tough conversation” she had with Nathan Wade ending their relationship and, crucially, when it occurred.
“The physical relationship was over pre-indictment,” Willis aid, referring to the criminal election interference charges she brought, aided by special prosecutor Wade, against Donald Trump in Georgia in August 2023.
But she said women and men “think differently” about what might constitute the end of a relationship. She also said there was a good deal of tension in her relationship with Wade towards the end:
He told me one time 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 always gave him his money back.
I don’t need anybody to foot my bills. The only man who’s ever footed my bills completely is my daddy.
Sadow tried again. “The romantic relationship ended before the indictment was returned. Yes or no?” he said.
“To a man, yes,” Willis replied.
Steve Sadow, an attorney for Donald Trump, is next to question Fani Willis, and their exchanges are even more hostile than those that preceded them.
“You don’t have to yell at me. I’m able to understand. So I would ask you to not yell at me,” Willis replied when Sadow asked a question about her living arrangements during the period she was having a relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.
Willis is also repeatedly claiming the phrasing of Sadow’s questions is “inaccurate”, as is definition of “romantic” to describe her relationship with Wade.
“A romantic relationship doesn’t necessarily have to be just sex. It can be dating, it can be holding hands. It can be any of those things that one might call romantic. I’m asking you whether or not prior to November 1st 2021 there was a romantic relationship with Mr Wade,” Sadow said.
Willis replied: “I do not consider our relationship to have become romantic until early 2022 … sometime between February and April.”
Almost inevitably, Donald Trump has now weighed in with an emailed attack on Fani Willis, and almost as inevitably it’s a fundraising appeal from his campaign, which is clearly watching today’s courtroom drama closely:
Fani Willis was responsible for taking my mugshot! First she coordinated with the Biden White House to take me down! Then she hired her lover to go after me and paid him with taxpayer dollars,” an email to supporters says, repeating numerous unverified allegations.
But now, right now, her corruption is being broadcast live to the whole world. I told you she’s corrupt as hell.”
The email concludes with the oft-heard claim of a “witch-hunt” and a request to “patriots” to chip in to defeat Willis.
Ashleigh Merchant, the attorney questioning Fani Willis, is asking why she chose to run for district attorney, citing a claim that Willis said she didn’t want to be “finally effed-up again”.
It appears relevant because Donald Trump has claimed Willis ran for the office because she was out to get him.
Willis says she felt that with her experience she was “the appropriate person” for what was a tough job:
It was a huge sacrifice to be district attorney in Fulton County. I was doing just fine. I had a municipal court judgeship that was paying me 100 something thousand a year, and we got to show up twice a week … [the] easiest thing I’ve ever done in life.
I also had private clients that were paying me to represent them, so I was able to have a law practice and raise two daughters by myself. They were times in life where things were hard.
So I was telling people I don’t really want to for DA. I’m in a good position right now, I got this easy job that I enjoy being the chief judge of the city of South Fulton, making money at the law firm, and I’m not sure that I want to make the sacrifice.
Eventually, I prayed. I think that I was the appropriate person.
Merchant’s questioning of Willis has now concluded.
Judge Scott McAfee says the heated atmosphere in the courtroom needs to cool down, and ordered a short break.
When the session resumed, with Fani Willis still on the stand, he admonished all parties to respect the decorum of the court.
Here’s my colleague Sam Levine’s latest take on this afternoon’s fiery proceedings:
In her time on the stand, Fani Willis has twice sought to remind the audience about the stakes of the case. At issue isn’t her relationship with Wade, but democracy. “Ms Merchant’s interests are contrary to democracy your honor, not to mine,” she said at one point.
In a heated exchange later she said “You’re confused… I’m not on trial. These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020.”
Willis’s testimony so far has sought to explain some of the biggest questions from Wade’s testimony this morning.
Explaining why she repaid Wade in cash for travel, Willis explained that she has always kept significant amounts of cash wherever she lays her head. She took from that stash to repay Wade. She has also been blunter about calling out “lies” in motions seeking to disqualify her.
By way of explanation, Ashleigh Merchant, mentioned above, is the attorney currently involved in the back-and-forth with Willis on the stand. She represents Michael Roman, one of Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the election interference case that Willis is prosecuting.
In one furious outburst, Fani Willis is angrily pushing back at what she says are personal attacks on her and Nathan Wade, and says opposing attorneys should focus their attention elsewhere.
Asked if she objected to records of flights she took with Wade being demanded, she said:
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.
Willis is also defending Wade’s character, saying they are “good friends”.
The judge has ordered another short break.
There were only a handful of trips together with Nathan Wade, Fani Willis is now telling the court:
We went to Aruba, I consider that one trip. On New Year’s Eve, we went on a cruise to the Bahamas. That’s the second trip.
We went to Belize. That was my trip, that was, you know, his 50th [birthday] and then Napa Valley. We went around May. I don’t know the dates, but it seems to me like it was close to Mother’s Day.
And those are the only trips.
Fani Willis is talking about two cruises out of Miami that she took with Nathan Wade, one in October 2022.
She says Wade booked and paid for the first one, but she reimbursed him “whatever it was”:
He is the one that would book the travel. But we need to be clear when we’re talking about just because he’s booked it doesn’t mean I consider him ever having taken me any place.
He paid for the cruise and the fights… whatever he told me it was, I gave him the money back.
She was asked where the cash came from:
I am sure that the source of the money is always the work sweat and tears of me.
For many, many years, I have kept money in my house… on my worst day probably only $500 or $1,000. And my best days, I probably had $15,000 in my house, cash.
There’s always going to be cash in my house or wherever I’m laying my head.
But Willis said she never paid Wade more than $2,500 in any one payment.
The Guardian’s Sam Levine is tweeting from the courtroom about Fani Willis’s testimony.
The Fulton county district attorney is angry about “lies” told her earlier in the case, including by her former friend Robin Yeartie, who testified today that a relationship between Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade began before she hired him to work on Donald Trump’s election interference case.
She’s being asked about her dealings with Yeartie, and vacations she allegedly took with Wade.
Fani Willis said she was “very anxious” to testify today, and ran from her office to get to the courtroom when she heard special prosecutor Nathan Wade’s testimony had concluded.
She said she had some “choice words” about the motion to disqualify her from Donald Trump’s election interference case but denies she had any substantive conversation with Wade, or anybody else about it:
I would not have. I don’t believe I’ve had any conversation with him that is substantive related to this.
Willis has adopted a defensive, verging on aggressive stance, and says she takes exception to allegations she slept with Wade the first day she met him, at a conference:
Your motion tried to implicate I slept with him at that conference, which I find to be extremely offensive. Mr Wade was my teacher.
It’s highly offensive when they replicate that you slept with somebody the first day you met with them, and I take exception to this.
Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis has just taken the stand in the election interference case in Georgia.
Almost as soon as she sat down, the judge called a five-minute break for certain documents to be copied and distributed.
She’ll be testifying soon about the nature of her relationship with, and cash payments to special prosecutor Nathan Wade, who wrapped up his lengthy period of testimony just now.
Stick with us…
Rumours that Russia is planning to deploy nuclear weapons in space have been dampened down by experts who say that while such technology is possible, there is no need to push the panic button.
The furore kicked off on Wednesday when the head of the US House of Representatives’ intelligence committee, Mike Turner, called for the Biden administration to declassify information on what he called a “serious national security threat”.
While Turner gave no further details, it was later reported by news outlets, citing unnamed sources, to involve Russia’s potential deployment of a nuclear anti-satellite weapon in space. The Kremlin dismissed the claim as a “malicious fabrication”.
Dr Bleddyn Bowen, an associate professor at the University of Leicester who specialises in outer space international relations and warfare, said the the lack of detail was no reason to panic. “It’s so vague and cryptic, it could be a number of different things. [But] no matter what they are, none of them are a big deal, to be honest. Everyone needs to calm down about this.”
Russia is bound by several legal restrictions regarding the use or presence of nuclear weapons in space. Article 4 of the Outer Space treaty (1967) bans nuclear weapons from being put into orbit, installed on celestial bodies or otherwise stationed in outer space, while the New Start treaty aims to reduce the number of deployable nuclear arms. The Partial Nuclear Test Ban treaty (1963) bans nuclear explosions in space.
You can read more here.
The White House just announced that the US will engage with Russia and allies on the Outer Space treaty and has no intention of violating it.
The White House national security spokesman John Kirby is telling reporters gathered in the west wing a little more detail about the “serious national security threat” that emerged into the public eye yesterday.
“It’s not an active capability,” Kirby said, after confirming that the threat was related to “an anti-satellite capability that Russia is developing, while adding that “there is no immediate threat to anyone’s safety.”
Kirby did not elaborate on reports that the new capability is about Russian plans to deploy nuclear weapons in space.
Kirby said Joe Biden has directed a series of actions by the administration, including briefings to congressional leaders and direct diplomatic engagement with Russia about the program.
The administration has not permitted more information to be made public yet, the spokesman said.
It was a surprise yesterday when the head of the House intelligence committee, Mike Turner, called for the Biden administration to declassify information on what he called a “serious national security threat”.
The emerging Russian system can’t directly cause “physical destruction” on Earth, Kirby just said.
The White House media briefing is underway. Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre opens by lamenting the mass shooting in Kansas City, Missouri, yesterday.
Gunfire erupted towards the end of the victory parade for the Kansas City Chiefs football team, after they won the Super Bowl last weekend.
She repeated the White House’s call for the US Congress to ban assault weapons for the general public.
Joe Biden has frequently called for such a ban during his presidency, so far to no avail.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
