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      Messy Diversion in Georgia Trump Case Creates Perception Problem

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      Regardless of whether Fani T. Willis is disqualified from leading the high-stakes case, the extraordinary detour it has taken may have changed it fundamentally. At some point in the coming weeks or months, the Georgia criminal case against former President Donald J. Trump and his allies will presumably focus once again on the defendants and whether they conspired to overturn Mr. Trump’s election loss there in 2020. But the extraordinary detour that the case has taken, plunging into the intimate details of a romantic relationship between the two lead prosecutors and forcing them to fight accusations of impropriety, may have changed it fundamentally. Now it is unclear whether the case will even remain with Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, since lawyers for Mr. Trump and other defendants are seeking to have her entire office disqualified. Even if the presiding judge allows Ms. Willis to keep the case, she is likely to face tough scrutiny from now on, including from a new state commission that will be able to remove prosecutors and from the Georgia Senate, which has opened an investigation. The controversy has also provided fresh fodder for Mr. Trump and his allies, who are adept at exploiting their opponents’ vulnerabilities. Mr. Trump was already making inflammatory attacks on Ms. Willis even before her relationship with Nathan J. Wade, the lawyer she hired to help run the election interference case, came to light. If nothing else, Ms. Willis’s decision not to disclose her relationship with Mr. Wade from its outset has created a messy diversion from an extremely high-stakes prosecution. Even if the revelations do not taint a jury pool in Fulton County, where Democrats far outnumber Republicans and Ms. Willis has many admirers, her world-famous case could face a lasting perception problem. And if the case gets taken from her, more serious problems may follow. Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court suggested on Friday that he is likely to not rule next week on whether the relationship created a disqualifying conflict of interest. But already, state officials are considering what might happen if Ms. Willis, who has given no indication that she will step aside voluntarily, has to hand off the case to another district attorney in the state. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Fani Willis must prove herself before a judge, her voters and the whole country

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      When Fani Willis took the stand to trade sharp elbows with lawyers defending Donald Trump and his co-defendants, she stood before three audiences.But Willis only really cares about two of them.The first is an audience of one: the superior court judge Scott McAfee, who will rule sometime two weeks or so from now on whether Willis, the special prosecutor Nathan Wade and the rest of the Fulton county district attorney’s office will continue to handle the Trump trial, or if instead it will be handed to another attorney chosen by the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia.If Willis is bumped off the case, it almost certainly means there will be no resolution before the US presidential election in November, in which Trump is almost certainly going to be the Republican nominee for president again.Willis and her team have been presenting evidence and testimony to rebut questions about financial motivations for pressing the case against Trump by showing how much personal harm Willis and her staff have had to endure in the process. Willis’s father, the venerable civil rights attorney John C Floyd, gave florid testimony today about the death threats and harassment that drove Willis from her home as she prosecuted the case, for example.McAfee recognizes high-drama courtroom confrontations for what they are: irrelevant to the legal question. He must decide if the appearance of impropriety and the legal question of alleged unjust enrichment raised by the defense are sufficient to create an appellate court problem if Trump and others are convicted at trial. Has there been misconduct, and is removing Willis the appropriate remedy under the law if there has been misconduct? That’s the legal question.But it’s not the only issue for Fani Willis, who is up for re-election in 263 days.Until this moment, Willis looked like an unbeatable shoe-in for re-election. She is, arguably, the highest-profile district attorney in the US today, and she’s as recognizable to a Fulton county voter as the president, governor or Georgia’s senators. In a game of name recognition … well, people have stopped mispronouncing her first name in Atlanta now.But the revelation that she had been dating a highly paid office subordinate while working on a trial with the presidency on the line raises questions about her judgment. She may be contemplating a political challenger, who will argue that Willis is not the one to continue the case … assuming it is still in court in November.Her challenge here was to remind voters why they voted for her in the first place: to aggressively confront crime in Atlanta. Willis beat a 20-year incumbent in 2020 amid sharply rising crime and issues with prosecutions by her predecessor. She won in part by arguing that she would get the job done where her previous boss could not.Willis has to make her case to the Fulton county voters that she’s still their best choice. That’s where the sharp elbows and Black cultural callbacks on the stand come from: she’s speaking to the second audience – the primarily Black, majority-female, predominantly Democratic Fulton county electorate who is watching all of this unfold dreading the possibility that the county’s chance to impose justice on the powerful may be slipping through her fingers.By showing her grief and rage, she humanizes herself before this audience, which is likely to be sympathetic to the horrors of a Black professional’s love life aired like a reality television show before the American public as a Trump defendant’s legal ploy.It’s telling, perhaps, that Atlanta’s mayor, Andre Dickens, and the former mayor Shirley Franklin were both in attendance at the hearing on Friday morning, ostensibly as a show of political and moral support for Willis.There is, of course, a third audience. Every other person in the free world.Americans of all political stripes recognize that there’s a lot riding on the outcome of this case. Of all the criminal and civil cases Trump faces today, a conviction in Georgia is the only one for which he is almost certain to do time in prison, because there’s effectively no pardon power to save him. And Trump’s recorded phone call provides powerful evidence for a prosecutor to present to a jury.Voters across the country have a stake in the outcome here. But the only voters that count for Willis’s purposes are the ones that live in Fulton county. And until that changes, she’s not going to care about what they think. More

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      Fani Willis hearing struggles to dent Trump prosecutor’s credibility

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      Lawyers for Donald Trump’s co-defendants charged over efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia struggled on Friday to undermine the credibility of the Fulton county district attorney and her top deputy, with whom she had a romantic relationship, in order to disqualify them from bringing the case.The district attorney, Fani Willis, and her deputy, Nathan Wade, both previously testified there was no financial conflict of interest (the defendants alleged Willis hired him to benefit financially) because the relationship started after Wade was retained as a special prosecutor.At an extended hearing, the defendants called Terrence Bradley, a former divorce lawyer for Wade, on the expectation that he would testify that the romantic relationship started before Wade started work on the Trump case on 1 November 2021.The objective, in essence, was to have Bradley to contradict under oath the testimony of Willis and Wade. Had that happened, that could lead the presiding Fulton county superior judge Scott McAfee to discredit, or at least give less weight to, the narrative advanced by the prosecutors.But the lawyers for the defendants were not immediately successful in their approach. Bradley was a particularly reluctant witness and testified he had privileged information about when the relationship started, but not personal knowledge he obtained separate from him representing Wade.That proved to be important because it meant Bradley provided little new evidence to help the defendants as they attempt to have Willis and Wade disqualified from prosecuting them on alleged conflict of interest grounds.The eventual outcome of the hearing – expected to continue potentially next Tuesday for arguments over what legal standards should be applied for disqualification – could have far-reaching implications for the viability of one of the most perilous criminal cases against Trump.If the defendants are able to meet their burden to show a conflict of interest that leads to the disqualification of Willis, it would also mean that the entire district attorney’s office would be disqualified. That would cast into disarray the already complicated racketeering prosecution.After a morning during which Willis did not return to the stand for further testimony – the state told the judge it had no further questions – and two additional witnesses gave evidence that tracked Willis’s narrative from the day before, the defendants called Bradley to testify under subpoena.Roman’s lawyer Ashleigh Merchant wanted Bradley to say on the witness stand what he had texted her in January: the relationship between Willis and Wade had started after they met at a judicial conference, long before Wade was hired to work on the Trump case.But the judge restricted the line of questioning to include information that Bradley learned independent of his legal work representing Wade in the divorce case, because that would be protected by attorney-client privilege protections.That led Merchant to try to overcome the privilege by invoking the so-called crime-fraud exception, which pierces privilege if legal advice is used in furtherance of a crime. The judge ruled that did not apply, but allowed the defendants to contest his decision with a sealed filing after the hearing.In a further twist, Merchant appeared to win a partial victory when Bradley testified that the relationship allegations as initially filed by Merchant earlier this year were accurate.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThat raised the dueling situation that crediting Bradley as a witness meant Willis and Wade had committed perjury, but not crediting Bradley meant he had lied about his former client and committed perjury himself for seemingly no clear reason.The allegations first surfaced in an 8 January motion filed by Merchant, who complained about a potential conflict of interest arising from what she described as “self-dealing” between Willis and Wade as a result of their then-unconfirmed romantic relationship.Roman’s filing, in essence, accused Willis of engaging in a quasi-kickback scheme, in which Wade paid for joint vacations to Florida and California using earnings of more than $650,000 from working on the Trump case. The filing also alleged the relationship had started before he was hired.Whether Willis will be disqualified remains uncertain.Legal experts have generally suggested the evidence to date – there has been almost none, bar Wade’s bank statements showing he paid for a couple of trips – does not show an actual conflict of interest.The potential problem for Willis is that she was previously disqualified from investigating the Georgia lieutenant governor, Burt Jones, over a lower legal standard of “appearance of impropriety”, after she publicly endorsed Jones’s political rival in Jones’s re-election race.The allegations have also threatened to turn the case into political theatre. Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, has derided the prosecution as scandal-plagued in addition to his usual refrain that the criminal charges against him are a political witch-hunt. More

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      Georgia voters shrug off Biden-Trump age question

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      Next week, Frank Stovall turns 103. The retired Lockheed engineer has until recently been a lifelong Atlantan, is a veteran of two wars, and is old enough to remember when Republicans were rare in Georgia.“Well, yes, I think they’re both healthy,” Stovall said, when asked at the Church at Wieuca in Buckhead about the mental fitness for office of President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump. “I’m a Republican, but I’m not going to vote for Trump, if I can help it. I hate to say this, but I think he was a traitor to the country on January 6.“Biden? I’ve been really impressed with him on everything except the border thing. But yeah, I think Biden is a good man. If he got mental lapses … goodness, most of us do when you get a few years on you.”Buckhead, an affluent neighborhood of Atlanta, is split between Republicans and Democrats. Georgia is often described as a politically purple state, with strong Democrats and strong Republicans competing to be seen in nearly equal numbers – though spaces where they cohabitate are scarce.So when a special prosecutor at the Department of Justice released a report last week alleging striking gaps in Biden’s memory and mental acuity, political pundits jumped to assess how the issue of age will affect the American presidential election in places like this. But in the US, broad opinions matter much less than those of the relatively small number of persuadable voters.“Basically, you’re catering to a million voters, in a few states,” said Clarence Blalock, a political consultant in Georgia who is competing in the Democratic primary to challenge Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. The average age of voters tends to be older than the general public, he said, and any strategy questioning the competence of the president – or Donald Trump – due to age may backfire. “They may feel insulted by it. I don’t think it’s a good strategy.”Certainly, many on the right saw in the report’s accusations a confirmation of what they already believe about Biden – that he is largely a figurehead, with decisions being made by others. “I feel sorry for him,” said Chris Swindell, 68, a self-described libertarian from Marietta. “He comes out, and he’s not running the country. The people in the background are running the country.”But few will flip their votes over the age issue, Blalock said. He noted that most partisans had already decided to overlook the flaws of their own candidates.One of those is Jimmy Bennett, 67, a staunch Republican and Trump voter.“Listen, we know a lot of older people that are on the money with their mindset,” said Bennett over a slice of pie at Matthew’s Cafeteria in politically ecumenical Tucker, Georgia.“But if they start making these crazy decisions, and start doing things way off, and then you can see the degrade, then that’s the time to step in.”Only about 10% of voters in Georgia consider changing their votes for any reason at all, and no matter who is running. In 2022, despite the threats of defection by stalwart Trump supporters, the Republican governor, Brian Kemp, defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams by about 300,000 votes out of roughly 4m ballots, but on the same day, the Democratic senator Raphael Warnock beat his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker, by about 40,000 votes (and later won a runoff by about 100,000).“We’re never going to have a 60-40 election,” said Brian Robinson, a Republican strategist and political commentator here. “We wouldn’t have a 60-40 election if Biden died and people were voting for a dead person.”Nonetheless, the age issue is top of mind for Americans of both parties, he said, consistently ranking along with immigration and the economy as the main concerns voters express. In that regard, the special prosecutor’s report was a blow to the Biden campaign. “Democrats are hoping that independent voters are coming to Biden because they don’t like Trump. The [age] issue nullifies some of that Democratic advantage,” Robinson said.“The Biden campaign has, in some way, to provide optics that he’s healthy mentally and physically – and that’s a risk.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut Trump has to be careful too, Robinson said. “The Democrats are trying to create an equivalency there. [Trump] has to avoid providing Democrats with ammo showing equivalent incapacity.”That may prove difficult, given Trump’s own propensity for mental lapses – for every time Biden confuses a Macron with a Mitterrand, Trump takes a Haley for a Pelosi – and equally advanced age: currently 81 and 77, both Biden and Trump would, if elected, be the oldest presidents ever.“I think Donald Trump is a fool and an idiot, and I think he has no mental acuity – period – because he doesn’t live in a world of reality. He lives in a fantasy world where facts are not facts,” said Jackie Goodman, 74, a fourth-generation Atlantan.For Goodman, her choice is about policy – she identifies as a pro-choice voter – and less about either man running.“I wish we could have a younger candidate who has a lot more vitality,” she admits. “But I definitely would not vote Republican – and I definitely would not vote for Trump.”Indeed, the question may be less about whether the age issue makes anyone switch their vote, but rather if it makes voters simply check out, said Blalock. Given the importance of turnout in US elections, how many Americans decide not to vote at all could prove crucial.“The idea that Biden doesn’t have it together, so I’m going to vote for Trump … I mean, do people think Trump has it together [either]?” he asked.“Or [do they] just stay home?” More

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      ‘That’s lies’: Fani Willis defends herself over relationship with Trump prosecutor – video

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      Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney, vehemently denied wrongdoing while testifying at a court hearing on Thursday as she rebutted accusations that her romantic relationship with a deputy prosecutor on the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump meant she should be disqualified from the case. The district attorney testified that her relationship with the special prosecutor Nathan Wade started months after he was retained to work on the case, charging Trump over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in the state, and ended in summer 2023 More

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      With Everything on the Line, Fani Willis Delivered Raw Testimony

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      Ms. Willis, the district attorney overseeing the Georgia prosecution of Donald J. Trump, searingly refuted allegations that she had a disqualifying conflict of interest.Fani T. Willis walked unaccompanied through the front door of a Fulton County courtroom on Thursday afternoon in a bright magenta dress and announced she was ready to testify. She was interrupting her lawyer, who at that very moment was trying to convince a judge that she should not have to testify at all.“I’m going to go,” Ms. Willis said.And so she did.For roughly three hours on Thursday, Ms. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., engaged in the fight of her life from the witness stand to try to salvage the case of her life, the prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump. In a raw performance, Ms. Willis, 52, presented herself as a woman in full — by turns combative and serene, focused and discursive (at one point she declared her preference for Grey Goose vodka over wine). Her language toggled between casual (a thousand dollars was “a G”) and precise: On numerous occasions, she prefaced her statements with variations on the phrase, “I want to be very clear.”She upbraided Ashleigh Merchant, one of the defense lawyers questioning her, alleging that Ms. Merchant’s court filings — which accused Ms. Willis of having a disqualifying conflict of interest stemming from a romantic relationship with Nathan J. Wade, the special prosecutor on the case — were full of lies. At one point her voice approached a yell, prompting Scott McAfee, the mild-mannered judge, to call a five-minute recess in an apparent effort to cool things down.Elsewhere, Ms. Willis chided Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Steven Sadow, when he asked if she had been in contact with Mr. Wade in 2020. Noting that Mr. Wade had cancer at the time, she said, “I am not going to emasculate a Black man.” She spoke of giving Mr. Wade a trip to Belize for his 50th birthday — earlier in the day, Ms. Merchant had asked Mr. Wade about the couple visiting a tattoo parlor there. She also admitted, in a digression that the lawyers’ questions did not seem to prompt, that she thought Mr. Wade had a sexist view of the world, and said it was the reason they broke up last summer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Personal questions, and a witness stays mum: key moments from the Fani Willis hearing

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      On the first day of a heated hearing, the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis and her deputy, special prosecutor Nathan Wade, took the stand, hoping to put an end to the allegations that their past relationship threatens the criminal case against Donald Trump and his allies in their attempts to overturn the 2020 election.A defendant in the Trump case, Mike Roman, is seeking to have Willis and Wade disqualified, alleging their relationship constituted a conflict of interest. His lawyer attempted to prove Willis financially benefitted from her relationship with Wade.If Roman is successful in having Willis relieved from bringing the case, it would result in the disqualification of the entire district attorney’s office.Here were some key moments from the hearing on Thursday.A key witness decided to stay mumTerrence Bradley, a former law partner of Nathan Wade, was supposed to be the witness that set up the dominoes to fall by testifying that the district attorney’s relationship began earlier than Wade had asserted in an affidavit. Superior court judge Scott McAfee implied that a decision to quash subpoenas for Wade, Willis and others depended in part on whether Bradley’s testimony was powerful enough to overcome suspicions that the whole legal gambit was a fishing exercise and a distraction.But Bradley, who served as Wade’s divorce lawyer for a time, cited attorney-client privilege and refused to testify about the details of his knowledge about the relationship between Wade and Willis.For a moment, it appeared that this would be the beginning and end of the hearing.A former friend gave perhaps the most damning testimony – if trueRobin Bryant-Yeartie, a former friend of Willis’s, testified that she was aware that Willis was romantically engaged with Wade. Bryant-Yeartie said they had started dating in 2019, before Willis had been elected as district attorney and before Donald Trump’s “perfect phone call” to Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensberger, which set off the investigation.Bryant-Yeartie’s testimony directly contradicted Wade’s sworn statement in an affidavit in his divorce case, which said he had not been involved in a relationship with someone else while still married. Prosecutors noted in Willis’s defense that Bryant-Yeartie and Willis had had a falling out and that Bryant-Yeartie had left the district attorney’s office in acrimony, but the testimony was enough to open the door, compelling Wade, and then later Willis, to take the stand.Wade was backed into a corner, but he still surprised the courtWade’s testimony had twists and turns, revealing more of the timeline and that he had cancer in 2020, limiting his time for outside relationships during the pandemic. He also tried to underscore the way he and Willis say they shared the bills: with him paying by credit card and her reimbursing him with cash.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut the lawyers, with their persistence, sometimes left him with no choice but to be direct.“Are you asking me if I had intercourse with the district attorney?” Wade said, after attorney Steve Sadow asked him if they had any kind of personal relationship after June 2023. Wade said no and that he has had no romantic relationship since.Fani came to fight, her wayOriginally objecting to taking the stand, Willis essentially overrode her lawyers to testify on Thursday afternoon. “I’m ready to go,” she said.With the spotlight on her, Willis attempted to explain and rebuff every allegation, and refocus the message. Sometimes, she was cheeky. “He likes wine. I don’t really like wine, to be honest with you,” she said, when explaining a trip to Napa Valley with Wade. “I like Grey Goose.”At other times, she called the lawyers liars, and tried to circumvent the questions to send a message to the public. “You’re confused … I’m not on trial,” she said to attorney Ashleigh Merchant. “These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020.” More

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      Trump prosecutor Fani Willis tells misconduct hearing: ‘I’m not on trial. These people are on trial for stealing an election’ – as it happened

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      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. More