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    With Everything on the Line, Fani Willis Delivered Raw Testimony

    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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    Trump Co-Defendant Suggests Georgia Prosecutors Lied About Relationship Timing

    A lawyer for the co-defendant said she had a witness who could testify that the relationship began before Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, hired Nathan Wade.A lawyer for one of former President Donald J. Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election case suggested on Friday that the two prosecutors leading the case had lied about when their romantic relationship started.The defense lawyer, Ashleigh Merchant, said that a witness she hoped to put on the stand could testify that the romantic relationship between Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, and the special prosecutor managing the Trump case, Nathan J. Wade, had begun before Ms. Willis hired Mr. Wade.That would contradict Mr. Wade, who said in a recent affidavit that his relationship with Ms. Willis had not begun until 2022, after his hiring. The affidavit was attached to a court filing made by Ms. Willis.Ms. Merchant identified the witness as Terrence Bradley, a lawyer who once worked in Mr. Wade’s law firm and for a time served as Mr. Wade’s divorce lawyer. “Bradley has non-privileged, personal knowledge that the romantic relationship between Wade and Willis began prior to Willis being sworn as the district attorney for Fulton County, Georgia in 2021,” Ms. Merchant’s filing, which came late Friday afternoon, states.Ms. Merchant, on behalf of her client Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign official, is seeking to have Mr. Wade, Ms. Willis and Ms. Willis’s entire office disqualified from the Trump case. Ms. Merchant argues that the romantic relationship, as well as vacations the prosecutors took together that were paid for at least in part by Mr. Wade, amount to a conflict of interest.“It is evident that the district attorney and her personally appointed special prosecutor have enriched themselves off this case,” Ms. Merchant wrote.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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    El informe del fiscal especial exculpa a Biden pero es un desastre político

    Una investigación concluyó que el mandatario era “bienintencionado” pero tenía “mala memoria”. El presidente salió a ofrecer declaraciones en un intento por realizar control de daños políticos.La decisión del jueves de no presentar cargos penales contra el presidente Joe Biden por mal manejo de documentos clasificados debió haber sido una exoneración legal inequívoca.En su lugar, fue un desastre político.La investigación, sobre el manejo de los documentos por parte de Biden después de ser vicepresidente, concluyó que era un “hombre bienintencionado de avanzada edad con una mala memoria” y que tenía “facultades disminuidas en la edad avanzada”, afirmaciones tan sorprendentes que pocas horas después motivaron un enérgico y emotivo intento de control de daños políticos por parte del presidente.The president defended his ability to serve when questioned by reporters on his memory and age during a news conference, hours after a special counsel cleared him of criminal charges in the handling of classified documents.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesLa noche del jueves, hablando a las cámaras desde la Sala de Recepciones Diplomáticas de la Casa Blanca, Biden arremetió contra el informe de Robert K. Hur, el fiscal especial, acusando a los autores del informe de “comentarios irrelevantes” sobre su edad y capacidad mental.“No saben de lo que están hablando”, dijo rotundamente el presidente.Biden pareció objetar especialmente la afirmación incluida en el informe de que durante las entrevistas con los investigadores del FBI no pudo recordar en qué año murió su hijo Beau.“¿Cómo diablos se atreve a mencionar eso?”, dijo el presidente, mientras parecía contener las lágrimas. “Cada Día de los caídos hacemos un servicio para recordarlo al que asisten amigos y familiares y la gente que lo amaba. No necesito a nadie, no necesito a nadie que me recuerde cuándo falleció”.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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    Biden Classified Documents Case: Takeaways From the Special Counsel Report

    The special counsel, Robert K. Hur, concluded that the evidence was insufficient to charge President Biden with a crime, but sharply criticized him.Attorney General Merrick B. Garland on Thursday released the report by Robert K. Hur, the special counsel Mr. Garland had assigned to investigate how classified documents ended up in an office formerly used by President Biden and in his home in Delaware. Here are some takeaways.The evidence was insufficient to bring criminal charges.Mr. Hur was bound by a Justice Department policy that holds that the Constitution implicitly makes sitting presidents temporarily immune from prosecution, so he could not have charged Mr. Biden even if he wanted to. But Mr. Hur wrote that Mr. Biden should not be charged regardless.“We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter,” he wrote. “We would reach the same conclusion even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president.”Mr. Hur wrote that he had found evidence that Mr. Biden had willfully retained and disclosed sensitive information after he left the vice presidency in 2017. But he said the evidence fell short of what would be necessary to “establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”Hur said Biden had “significant” memory problems.Mr. Hur listed various reasons that a jury might reasonably doubt that Mr. Biden had “willfully” retained classified documents after leaving the Obama White House, including that Mr. Biden had reported the problem and invited investigators to search his home. But Mr. Hur cited another reason with potentially explosive political implications for the 81-year-old president as he seeks re-election: that he had memory problems.Mr. Hur wrote that Mr. Biden’s memory “appeared to have significant limitations.” The special counsel portrayed Mr. Biden’s recorded conversations with his ghostwriter in 2017 as “often painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events.” And, the report said, his recollection “was worse” in his interview with Mr. Hur in October, when Mr. Biden came off, he said, “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”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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    Special Counsel Investigating Biden Has Sent Final Report to White House

    Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has also received a copy while the White House reviews it for claims of executive privilege, indicating a public release is nearly at hand.The final report of Robert K. Hur, the special counsel investigating President Biden’s handling of classified documents retained from his vice presidency, has been sent to the White House and to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, two of the final steps before its public release, officials said on Wednesday.Mr. Garland received the report on Monday, he told congressional leaders in a letter on Wednesday. He said that Mr. Hur had previously sent a copy to the White House Counsel’s Office for possible revisions based on claims of executive privilege, and that the White House was still reviewing the report.Ian Sams, a spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office, said the review would be completed by the end of the week. He did not comment on its findings.Mr. Garland’s letter contained no indication that the department would pursue an indictment, and people around Mr. Biden have said they do not expect one.The report is expected to criticize Mr. Biden and his aides for sloppy record-keeping and storage, according to people in Mr. Biden’s orbit, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. But those people have long doubted that any charges will be filed, based on the lines of inquiry that prosecutors have pursued in their interviews with witnesses and on the president’s cooperation with investigators.Mr. Garland appointed Mr. Hur, a veteran prosecutor who worked in the Trump administration, about a year ago to examine “the possible unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or other records discovered” after Mr. Biden left the Obama administration.Former President Donald J. Trump, who was charged last summer with obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim classified materials at his resort in Florida, is likely to seize on the report to downplay his own legal woes — and to claim the Justice Department has targeted him politically while letting Mr. Biden escape punishment.But Mr. Hur’s investigation does not appear to be comparable in scope or seriousness to the one into Mr. Trump’s retention of sensitive government documents.Mr. Biden’s lawyers immediately notified the National Archives and Records Administration upon discovering a cache of classified documents in late 2022 when they were closing an office in Washington he occupied after leaving the vice presidency in 2017. They have since cooperated with the Justice Department, and gave the F.B.I. access to his house in Wilmington, Del., where investigators discovered more material.Mr. Trump, by contrast, repeatedly resisted requests from the National Archives, which is responsible for storing sensitive White House documents, and initially turned over only a portion of what he had taken when he left office in January 2021. He failed to fully respond to a subpoena to return the rest, and ultimately F.B.I. agents with a warrant searched his home and office. More

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    Special Counsel in Biden Documents Case Is Expected to Release Report Soon

    Most of the work by Robert K. Hur appears to have wrapped up after President Biden sat down with investigators in October, according to people in Mr. Biden’s orbit.Robert K. Hur, the special counsel investigating President Biden’s mishandling of documents retained from his vice presidency, is expected to release his report soon, according to people with knowledge of the situation.The imminent release of the report suggests that Mr. Hur is nearing the end of an investigation that began just over a year ago.It is expected to criticize Mr. Biden and his aides for sloppy record-keeping and storage, according to people in Mr. Biden’s orbit, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. But those people have long believed he will not be charged with any crime, judging from the lines of inquiry prosecutors have pursued in their interviews with witnesses and the president’s cooperation with investigators.Most of Mr. Hur’s work was completed in the final days of 2023, and appears to have wrapped up after Mr. Biden sat down with investigators in October, those people said. He also conducted interviews with several longtime advisers in the Biden administration, including the former chief of staff Ron Klain, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, and Steve Ricchetti, his counselor.Former President Donald J. Trump, who was charged over the summer with obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim classified materials at his resort in Florida, is likely to seize on the report to downplay his own legal woes — and to claim the Justice Department has targeted him politically while letting Mr. Biden escape punishment.But Mr. Hur’s investigation does not appear to be comparable in scope or seriousness to Mr. Trump’s retention of sensitive government documents.Mr. Biden’s lawyers immediately notified the National Archives and Records Administration upon discovering a cache of classified documents in late 2022 when they were closing an office in Washington he occupied after leaving the vice presidency in 2017. They have since cooperated with the Justice Department, and gave the F.B.I. access to his house in Wilmington, Del., where they discovered more material.Mr. Trump, by contrast, repeatedly resisted requests from the National Archives, which is responsible for storing sensitive White House documents, initially turned over only a portion of what he had taken when he left office in January 2021. He failed to fully respond to a subpoena to return the rest and ultimately was subjected to a search of his home and office by F.B.I. agents with a warrant.Last January, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed Mr. Hur, a veteran prosecutor who worked in the Trump administration, to examine “the possible unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or other records discovered” after Mr. Biden left the Obama administration.With the exception of President Barack Obama, every occupant of the Oval Office since Watergate has confronted a special prosecutor scrutinizing him or members of his staff, sometimes for relatively narrow matters but at other times for issues that have mushroomed into the threat of impeachment. More

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    How Allegations of an Office Romance Came to Complicate the Case Against Trump

    The claims involving Fani Willis and Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she hired to manage the sprawling case in Georgia, have led to new questions about Mr. Wade’s qualifications.Fani T. Willis ran for district attorney in Georgia’s Fulton County in 2020 with the slogan “Integrity matters!” and frequently pummeled the incumbent, her former boss, with accusations of ethical lapses. Soon after her victory, she set up a group to interview job candidates called the Integrity Transition Hiring Committee.One of its members was Nathan J. Wade, a lawyer and municipal court judge from the Atlanta suburbs whom she counted as a longtime friend and mentor. Indeed, it was the personal bond they shared that Ms. Willis has described as a key to her decision to hire him to lead the criminal case of a lifetime: her office’s prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump for his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.“I need someone I can trust,” she said in a 2022 interview.But in recent days, allegations have surfaced that Mr. Wade was not only a mentor to Ms. Willis, but also a romantic partner. The allegations appeared in a court motion filed this month by Michael Roman, one of Mr. Trump’s 14 co-defendants in the Georgia case. In an interview with The New York Times, a person familiar with the situation said the two had grown close after meeting in a legal education course for judges in 2019 — some two years before Ms. Willis hired Mr. Wade as special prosecutor in the Trump case.The two lawyers had at times been affectionate with each other in public settings, the person said. Ms. Willis has not addressed the allegations of a romantic relationship, nor has Mr. Wade. Ms. Willis’s office said it would reply to Mr. Roman’s motion in court filings.On Friday, credit card statements included in a filing in Mr. Wade’s divorce case show that he purchased airline tickets for himself and Ms. Willis on April 25, 2023, for a trip from Atlanta to San Francisco, and on Oct. 4, 2022, for a trip to Miami. They appear to partially support the contention in Mr. Roman’s motion that Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis had made trips to numerous vacation spots together, with Mr. Wade paying for some of the travel.Ms. Willis speaking at Big Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Atlanta last Sunday.Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesWhether these new revelations will disrupt the Trump case — or Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade’s role in it — remains unclear. Mr. Roman’s motion argues that Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade violated the state bar’s rules of professional conduct, the county code regarding conflicts of interest and, possibly, federal law. It calls for the case against Mr. Roman to be dismissed, and for Mr. Wade, Ms. Willis and Ms. Willis’s entire office to be disqualified from the case.In a letter to Ms. Willis on Friday, the county commissioner who chairs the board’s audit committee, Bob Ellis, demanded documents from her in an effort to determine whether county funds paid to Mr. Wade “were converted to your personal gain in the form of subsidized travel or other gifts.”At the very least, the revelations have raised questions about Ms. Willis’s motivation for hiring Mr. Wade, a legal generalist who appears to act as a sort of player-manager for the prosecution’s multi-lawyer team.A review of Mr. Wade’s more than two decades as a lawyer by The New York Times also raises the issue of his qualifications, and whether they were sufficient to justify his appointment to a job that has made him more than $650,000 in taxpayer dollars and catapulted him to the top of one of the highest-profile criminal cases in the country. As a fixture on the legal and political scene in suburban Cobb County, Mr. Wade spent years handling low-level criminal cases, first as a prosecutor and then a judge. But he yearned to take on weightier work. And while he landed some, defending clients in a number of serious felony cases, his dream of being elected a superior court judge, where he could preside over bigger cases, was repeatedly denied to him by voters. Mr. Wade’s publicly available record as a lawyer shows scant evidence that he prosecuted major criminal cases, with no evidence that he has handled a major political corruption case or one involving the state’s complicated racketeering statute, known as RICO, under which all of the defendants in the Trump case have been charged. “The realm of attorneys who handle Georgia RICO cases is a small one, and he is not someone who was in that realm before the Trump case,” said Chris Timmons, an Atlanta trial lawyer who handled white-collar cases for more than 15 years as a prosecutor. Several former Georgia prosecutors say that Mr. Wade’s fee, of $250 per hour, did not seem excessive. But some of them also questioned whether he had the qualifications to lead such a high-stakes case. “I can’t judge on whether it’s a legitimate hire, but I think it’s a legitimate question to ask why this particular lawyer was hired,” said Danny Porter, the former longtime district attorney in Gwinnett County and a Republican.Speaking recently at a historically Black church in Atlanta, Ms. Willis said that the questions raised about her hiring of Mr. Wade were racist. She praised Mr. Wade’s “impeccable credentials” and said they were being questioned because both she and Mr. Wade were Black.Mr. Wade could not be reached for comment for this story. But his defenders point to the measurable successes the prosecution team has notched so far under his stewardship. Prosecutors have obtained four guilty pleas from the original cast of 19 co-defendants, and beaten back, so far, an effort to have the case moved to the federal court system, which would offer some advantages to the defendants.Gerald A. Griggs, a lawyer and the president of the state N.A.A.C.P. who knows both Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis personally, noted that as a defense lawyer, Mr. Wade brings a valuable perspective to a team that includes a number of veteran prosecutors. A defense lawyer “can show you where the holes are to make sure your case is strong,” he said. From traffic tickets to feloniesMr. Wade’s publicly available record as a lawyer shows scant evidence that he prosecuted major criminal cases.Pool photo by Elijah NouvelageMr. Wade, according to an old job application, was born in Houston, studied at Texas State University, then went on to attend John Marshall Law School in Atlanta. He once told an Atlanta-area magazine, Cobb in Focus, that his career path was influenced by his father, a Vietnam veteran, and by early involvement in church activities that sparked an interest in public speaking.By the late 1990s, Mr. Wade was in Cobb County, where he spent some time as an assistant solicitor, a prosecuting job that handles traffic cases and minor crimes. He moved to private practice to focus on civil matters but told the magazine that he continued to do some prosecution work for local municipalities.Mr. Wade’s civil cases have ranged from divorces to paternity matters, child support, car accidents, small claims and personal injury issues. The criminal cases he handled as a defense lawyer included clients charged with aggravated assault and battery, armed robbery, rape, cocaine trafficking and financial fraud.Ron Coleman, a retired Atlanta lawyer, said he faced Mr. Wade in a 2016 case in which Mr. Wade’s client claimed that she found glass in her food at a chain restaurant. A settlement was reached in mediation, and one of the things that Mr. Coleman recalled was that Mr. Wade was not as aggressive as some other lawyers he has worked against in such cases. “I’ve dealt with a lot of guys who would destroy you if they saw an opening, but he didn’t strike me as having that kind of focus or intensity,” he said. In a 2021 slip and fall case in which one of Mr. Wade’s clients was suing another restaurant company, Robert Jenkins, a lawyer for the defendant, said he found Mr. Wade to be both assertive and skilled.“He was forceful, but cool and composed,” he said. “And when he asks question number one, he knows what question number three is going to be. He seemed two steps ahead.”A Black Republican amid demographic changeMr. Wade representing the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office in court. Pool photo by Jason GetzMr. Wade had already made history, in 2011, as the first Black man to be appointed to a judgeship in the city of Marietta, Ga. As an associate judge for the Marietta Municipal Court, he dealt with small-bore matters like traffic stops. He set his sights on more.Politically, it seemed as though there might be a path. Cobb County’s population boomed in the 1960s and 1970s with an influx of white city dwellers fearful of an integrating Atlanta. In the 1990s it was represented by House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who in 1994 led a national conservative resurgence known as the Republican Revolution.But by the 2000s, demographic change was afoot as racial attitudes shifted and people of all kinds sought the same suburban idyll. As it gained residents, Cobb County became increasingly integrated, with Black residents growing to nearly 30 percent of the population in 2022 from just under 10 percent in 1990.For years, Mr. Wade was a regular at county Republican breakfast meetings, and he served for a time as a delegate to the county convention, said Jason Shepherd, who chaired the Cobb County Republican Party at the time. Mr. Shepherd said he once helped distribute yard signs for Mr. Wade during one of his numerous failed bids to be elected to a higher judgeship, and called him “charismatic,” “energetic” and “more on the Republican side on law enforcement issues.” In 2016, during one of his unsuccessful attempts to run for Cobb County superior court judge, he was supported by Ashleigh Merchant — the lawyer who filed the motion this month on Mr. Roman’s behalf that seeks to have him removed from the Trump case. The motion questions Mr. Wade’s qualifications. But in a Facebook post in the midst of his judge’s race, she praised him for his extensive résumé. “Nathan has practiced in every area of the law that appears before the Superior Court bench,” she wrote. (She recently explained her change of heart by saying that Mr. Wade seemed like a better choice to her than his opponent at the time.)According to the Cobb County Board of Elections and Registration, Mr. Wade ran four times for superior court judge between 2008 and 2016. They were nonpartisan races. He lost each time. Mr. Wade found himself embroiled in Cobb County politics in a different way in 2020, when he was accused in a lawsuit filed by a local NBC affiliate of heading an investigation of the county jail that, according to the suit, was in fact a ruse by the longtime sheriff at the time, Neil Warren, a Republican, to keep reporters from accessing documents about a string of jailhouse deaths. No investigative report ever came publicly to light. The Cobb County Sheriff’s Office said it had no such report in its files and was “unable” to comment on any work Mr. Wade might have done on the jail. Mr. Warren did not respond to numerous calls and texts seeking comment. Mr. Wade also declined to answer questions on the matter. But in an earlier court hearing, he said his inquiry had not been memorialized in documents. “I have obviously my brainchild, what’s going on in my mind about it,” he said. “That’s what I have.” Two lawyers land two big jobsMs. Willis and Mr. Wade, second from left, in August.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesWhen Ms. Willis won election in 2020, she instilled high hopes for a fresh start at the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, which is the largest such office in Georgia and handles most of the criminal cases in Atlanta. Her predecessor, Paul L. Howard Jr., who had been in office for more than 20 years, was burdened with a recent ruling against him from the state ethics commission, a sexual harassment complaint (of which he was later found not guilty) and questions, raised by Ms. Willis, about whether he had played politics in his handling of a high-profile police shooting.Ms. Willis, a single mother of two who had been one of Mr. Howard’s courtroom stars, handily defeated him in a Democratic primary runoff in August 2020. In heavily Democratic Fulton County, there was no Republican opponent on the general election ballot. She would become the first woman to hold the job.“Y’all, we made herstory,” she said in her victory speech. “You have my word, during my tenure as district attorney in Fulton County, we will be a beacon for justice and ethics in Georgia and across the nation.”She took office in January 2021. The next month, she opened the criminal investigation into Mr. Trump and his allies and began building a team to prosecute the case. Some of them, like the lawyers Donald Wakeford and Daysha Young, were experienced prosecutors who had left the office but rejoined as full-time employees after Ms. Willis’s election. She also contracted for outside expertise, bringing in John Floyd, a lawyer widely considered Georgia’s premier expert on racketeering law. She hired Anna Green Cross, a former prosecutor with extensive experience trying murder cases who has been a key player for the D.A.’s office in federal court, where some co-defendants in the Trump case have been arguing, so far unsuccessfully, to have the case moved.Ms. Willis said she also needed a special prosecutor to lead the growing team, and turned to Mr. Wade to help her find one. “The truth is, and I mean it in no way disrespectful to Mr. Wade, he was not my first choice as special counsel,” she said in an interview in 2022.She said she had told a number of more experienced or well-known lawyers about the job first. But they turned her down. At least one of them was concerned that trying Mr. Trump could open the door to personal security threats. Eventually, she said, she and other advisers turned to Mr. Wade and encouraged him to take the position. Ms. Willis recalled that Mr. Wade said, “Well, you know, I’ve spent a little time as a prosecutor, but really more of my career has been as a defense attorney.”She replied: “Well, I’ve been a defense attorney and a prosecutor, too. What I need is a trial lawyer.” From that point, Ms. Willis recalled, “it was a convincing process” to get Mr. Wade to sign up. “But he wasn’t afraid,” she said. “And I needed someone not afraid.”Mr. Wade’s first day under contract with the district attorney’s office was Nov. 1, 2021. He was to be paid an hourly rate of $250 per hour, the same rate as Ms. Cross. Records show Mr. Floyd has charged between $150 and $200 per hour.County records posted online also show that Mr. Wade’s law partner, Christopher A. Campbell, has been paid $126,070 by the district attorney’s office since June 2021 and that his former law partner, Terrence Bradley, was paid at least $74,480 since May of that year. Jeff DiSantis, a spokesman for Ms. Willis’s office, said that the payments to Mr. Campbell and Mr. Bradley were for services unrelated to the Trump case, including making court appearances in cases on behalf of the D.A.’s office when it was short-staffed and removing documents in potential public corruption cases that members of the D.A.’s office are not allowed to see.Managing the caseMr. Wade, left, and the lawyer Daysha Young during a hearing in October.Pool photo by Alyssa PointerIn court appearances, various members of the Trump prosecution team have taken turns handling presentations before judges. In state court, many of the complex legal issues that have arisen have been argued by prosecutors other than Mr. Wade. But much of the work of the Trump prosecution team occurs behind closed doors, which makes Mr. Wade’s full contribution difficult to discern. In some cases, Mr. Wade has raised the ire of lawyers connected to the case. One of them was Tim Parlatore, the lawyer for Bernard Kerik, a former New York Police commissioner who had been subpoenaed to testify by the district attorney’s office. In a letter to Mr. Wade in October, Mr. Parlatore said that prosecutors had identified Mr. Kerik as a co-conspirator in the case. For that reason, Mr. Parlatore said, Mr. Wade should have understood from the beginning that he would not allow Mr. Kerik to testify without a grant of immunity. “You seemed genuinely surprised by this relatively basic application of the 5th Amendment right to not answer questions from the very prosecuting agency that has publicly accused him of being a co-conspirator,” Mr. Parlatore wrote, addressing Mr. Wade.Another who clashed with Mr. Wade was Brian F. McEvoy, a lawyer for Gov. Brian P. Kemp of Georgia, whom Mr. Trump had telephoned late in 2020 for help in overturning Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s win in the state. In a 2022 motion, Mr. McEvoy described a breakdown in communications between him and prosecutors as they discussed the terms of a potential interview of the governor. Mr. McEvoy said Mr. Wade’s demand that Mr. Kemp meet with prosecutors within a specific time frame came off as “threatening.”Ms. Willis weighed in with an email to Mr. McEvoy, accusing him of “rude and disparaging” conduct toward her staff that was “beneath an officer of the court.”One the most awkward moments Mr. Wade has spent in the spotlight came when a number of co-defendants in the Trump case complained to the presiding judge that they had received auto-generated mailers from a local law firm that was trying to drum up business.“Our lawyers have an abundance of experience handling cases in the state and local courts of Metro Atlanta,” the letters stated.The law firm was Mr. Wade’s.Reporting was contributed by More

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    Judge Gives Prosecutors Access to G.O.P. Lawmaker’s Messages in Jan. 6 Case

    The roughly 1,700 messages are from the cellphone of Representative Scott Perry, who was involved in discussions with Trump administration officials about overturning the election.A federal judge has allowed the special counsel investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election access to about 1,700 messages from the seized phone of Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.Mr. Perry, the chairman of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus who played a role in attempts to overturn the election, had sought to keep the messages from prosecutors. But in an order late Tuesday, James E. Boasberg, the chief judge of the Federal District Court in Washington, prohibited federal prosecutors from retrieving just 396 messages from more than 2,000.Judge Boasberg wrote that those messages were covered by the Constitution’s speech or debate clause, which provides protections for lawmakers’ legislative discussions, while also ordering that a majority be turned over.The messages could offer additional evidence for Jack Smith, the special counsel leading the federal election case against Mr. Trump. Judge Boasberg said they concerned Mr. Perry’s attempts to get information about possible voter fraud; influence people outside the federal government; discuss Vice President Mike Pence’s certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory; and communicate about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.A lawyer for Mr. Perry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.As federal officials investigated the effort to overturn the 2020 election, the F.B.I. seized Mr. Perry’s personal cellphone in the summer of 2022 and created a forensic copy of its contents. The F.B.I. later returned the phone and told Mr. Perry he was not the target of the investigation, his lawyer said at the time.“The Justice Department informed us that Representative Perry is not a target of its investigation,” the lawyer, John Irving, said in a statement. “Representative Perry has directed us to cooperate with the Justice Department in order to ensure that it gets the information it is entitled to, but to also protect information that it is not entitled to.”Mr. Perry then filed a motion to prohibit investigators from getting the messages, arguing that they were protected under the Constitution. He lost that motion, but an appellate court ordered a judge to review the communications on a document-by-document basis.In the weeks after the 2020 election, Mr. Perry was among at least 11 Republican members of Congress involved in discussions with Trump administration officials about overturning the results, according to the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack. Those included plans to pressure Mr. Pence to throw out electoral votes from states won by Mr. Biden. Mr. Perry also endorsed the idea of encouraging supporters to march to the Capitol, the committee said.He played an active role in the attempt to replace Jeffrey A. Rosen, then the acting attorney general, with a more compliant official, Jeffrey Clark. More