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Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis took the stand Thursday and offered a blistering rebuke of claims she had an improper romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor in her office, accusations that underlie an effort to disqualify her and her office from prosecuting the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald Trump.

“I’m ready to go,” Willis said before she walked toward the witness box to testify in an evidentiary hearing in the election interference case. She was sworn in several minutes after 3 p.m. and testified for about two hours.

The testimony was contentious from the outset, as the district attorney accused Ashleigh Merchant, the lawyer for Trump co-defendant Michael Roman, of being “dishonest” about the claims Merchant raised during a proceeding Monday and said she has been “anxious” to testify.

“You’ve been intrusive into people’s personal lives,” Willis to Merchant. “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. I object to you getting any personal records of mine.”

Willis called implications made by Merchant in court filings about the origins of her relationship with Wade “highly offensive” and said her interests are “adverse to democracy.”

Willis’ testimony comes after Wade answered questions under oath for several hours about his marriage and how his association with Willis developed from their first meeting at a judicial conference in 2019 to the “personal relationship” that he testified began in early 2022, after his appointment as a special prosecutor in November 2021. Wade said the relationship ended around June, while Willis said they had a “tough conversation” in August, but acknowledged he likely said earlier.

“Miss Willis, as am I, we’re private people. Our relationship wasn’t a secret, it was just private,” Wade said, adding that he would not have discussed it publicly. 

Wade and Willis’ relationship is the subject of an evidentiary hearing underway as part of the sprawling racketeering case brought in Fulton County against Trump and 18 co-defendants for their alleged scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Four of those charged have accepted plea deals from Willis’ office. Trump and his remaining co-defendants have pleaded not guilty to all counts.

The hearing arose out of a bid by Roman to disqualify Willis and her office and dismiss the indictment on the grounds it is invalid and unconstitutional.

Wade acknowledged the couple took two trips together in 2023, one to Belize in March and another to Napa, California, and they visited Tennessee and Alabama on day trips in 2022. Willis and Wade also traveled to Aruba after they took a cruise with his mother in 2022, he said.

He said he used his business credit card to book the travel to Belize, which was a birthday gift to him, and Aruba. But Willis reimbursed him for the entire Belize trip, and covered the cost of excursions in Napa, Wade testified.

“If you’ve ever spent any time with Miss Willis, you understand that she’s a very independent, proud woman so she’s going to insist that she carries her own weight,” Wade told Ashleigh Merchant, Roman’s lawyer. “It actually was a point of contention between the two of us. She is going to pay her own way.”

Willis confirmed while on the stand that she took a cruise with Wade and his mother in October 2022 and then gifted him the Belize trip for his 50th birthday.

“I don’t consider him having taken me anyplace,” she said, adding that she reimbursed Wade based on the amount he relayed to her. She testified that she paid him in cash and that she keeps cash in her home.

Asked about the source of the money, Willis said it is the result of the “work, sweat and tears of me.” She said she keeps cash on-hand because of advice from her father to have at least six months’ worth at a time.

“I always have cash at the house,” she said.

Wade said traveling with Willis can be challenging, given the attention she receives and safety concerns, so she limits her transactions. He refuted that there was any effort to conceal their travels, given that the purchases are listed on his credit card statements.

Wade was asked repeatedly about the cash reimbursements from Willis, including what he did with the money he received from her, whether he deposited the money in a bank account or kept it around his home, whether he accompanied Willis to the ATM when she withdrew the cash to cover her portion of the trips, and if he asked Willis for records that would show she would pay him back for the travel. He said he did not deposit the funds, and Wade said he did not question where Willis’ cash came from.

During the questioning from Craig Gillen, a lawyer for David Shafer, former Georgia GOP chair and another one of Trump’s co-defendants, Wade sought to dispel accusations that he used money he received for his work on the Fulton County case to pay for his trips with Willis. 

“To say that I’m paying a credit card statement with funds coming from Fulton County or from the state of Georgia would not be an accurate statement because the funds could have very well come from my private practice,” Wade told Gillen.

Later, he told the court that his income decreased “significantly” as a result of his work for the district attorney’s office despite spending nearly all of his time in 2022 on the case against Trump involving the integrity of the 2020 election.

Financial affidavits discussed during Wade’s testimony indicated that his monthly income from 2022 to 2023 decreased from $14,000 to $9,000, and Wade said he often worked above the cap that set the maximum hours he could bill for.

“There’s so many hours here that I worked that I couldn’t get paid for,” he said. “This is not the type of job that you can walk away from because you’re not getting paid for it. There’s some professional rules of responsibility to an attorney who’s engaged in a case. You have to see it through.”

The timeline surrounding Wade and Willis’ relationship has emerged as a crucial issue, as a former longtime friend of Willis, who also worked with her in the District Attorney’s Office, contested assertions the couple made in court filings about when their romantic relationship began.

Robin Bryant-Yeartie testified that Willis’ romantic relationship with Wade began shortly after they met at the judicial conference — in October or November of 2019 — a revelation that came during separate questioning from Merchant and Steven Sadow, who is representing Trump in the case, about what she observed and knew about Willis’ relationship with Wade. 

Appearing before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee via Zoom, Yeartie testified that Willis also told her she was engaged in a romantic relationship with Wade in 2020 and 2021, and said she witnessed “hugging, kissing,” and “just affection” between the two before November 2021, when Wade was hired by Willis.

But during cross-examination by Anna Cross, a lawyer in the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, Wade revealed that he was battling cancer in 2020 and part of 2021. Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, his illness kept him from “leaving environments that aren’t sterile,” Wade said.

“I had health on my mind,” he testified.

Yeartie and Willis lived together for a brief time in Hapeville, a city south of Atlanta, and Wade acknowledged visiting their condo before he was hired in November 2021

Yeartie’s testimony appears to contradict claims from Wade made in an affidavit, in which he claimed his relationship with Willis began in 2022, after he was hired as a special prosecutor to assist in the case against Trump and his co-defendants.

Anna Cross, a lawyer in the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, sought to raise doubts about Yeartie’s credibility, asking her several questions about her performance while working for the district attorney and whether she was ever disciplined for poor performance.

Yeartie said she was written up once, and referenced a “situation” in which she was informed that she was going to be terminated if she did not resign. Yeartie said she has not spoken with Willis since her departure from the district attorney’s office in 2022.

McAfee is presiding over the evidentiary hearing to consider Roman’s motion to disqualify Willis and her office from prosecuting the 2020 election interference case in Georgia. Roman, a former Republican National Committee staffer, alleged that Willis had an improper relationship with Wade, paid him more than $650,000 for his work for the D.A.’s office and then benefited financially from the relationship when Wade allegedly took her on cruises and trips. 

A filing by the Fulton County D.A.’s office earlier this month confirmed there had been a romantic relationship between Willis and Wade but stated that it began long after Willis hired him. In the affidavit, Wade also denied that he had any financial interest in the outcome of the Georgia election interference case.

Terrence Bradley, Wade’s former law partner, was called to testify by Roman’s attorney, Merchant. Bradley’s attorney, however, objected when Merchant began asking him about the relationship, citing attorney-client privilege because Bradley had for a time represented Wade in his divorce case.

“I was advised by the bar,” Bradley said. “I cannot reveal anything that I saw or learned.” McAfee commented, “That’s a broader representation of attorney-client privilege than I’ve ever heard.”

McAfee said earlier this week that the evidentiary hearing had to proceed because it’s “possible that the facts alleged … could result in disqualification” and “to establish the record on those core allegations.” 

He listed these issues for the hearing: Whether a relationship existed, whether it was romantic, when it formed, whether it continues and any personal benefit conveyed as a result of the relationship. McAfee has also said that some of the arguments made by Roman’s attorney are not relevant, like Wade’s alleged lack of experience in handling racketeering cases like the Trump case.

“As long as a lawyer has a heartbeat and a bar card,” that lawyer’s appointment is within the D.A.’s discretion, McAfee said Monday. McAfee has not found violations of Fulton County case law code, which would be relevant to a motion to disqualify a prosecutor for a pending criminal case.