Hearings on Trump's criminal cases in New York and Georgia

District Attorney Fani Willis attacked the defense attorney who brought allegations against Willis of an improper relationship with her lead prosecutor on the case against Donald Trump and others as being a liar.

“I very much want to be here,” Willis said.

Willis attacked defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant as she began to question Willis during the hearing, saying that questions she was asking were based on lies.

“It’s ridiculous that you lied on Monday and yet here we still are,” Willis said of a hearing earlier this week on efforts by Willis to stop Thursday’s hearing from occurring.

It’s Donald Trump’s criminal case, but it’s Fani Willis now on trial, in a way.

This doesn’t happen often: The district attorney who has charged Donald Trump with racketeering is under oath, defending her ethics and testifying about her romantic relationship with the top special prosecutor on the Trump case, Nathan Wade.

Willis had fought testifying, both in Wade’s ongoing divorce proceedings and up until just moments ago.

And the risks could not be greater: The judge could remove Willis and Wade from this case, depending on what they say and their believability about when their relationship began, and if Willis benefited from it around the time she was hiring Wade to work for her.

It’s also politically explosive — with Willis’ credibility on the line.

Lawyers don’t often choose to take the stand, knowing the risks. But the Georgia case against Trump has been anything but typical.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis jumped in to defend her 2020 election interference case as she took the stand in a hearing over whether to disqualify her from the case.

“I've been very anxious to have this conversation with you today. So I ran to the courtroom,” Willis told Ashleigh Merchant, a defense attorney who is expected to press her on allegations of an improper relationship between her and Nathan Wade, the top prosecutor in the case.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who brought the Georgia election subversion case against Donald Trump and allies, has been called to testify in an evidentiary hearing seeking to disqualify her from the case.

Willis has been accused of having a romantic relationship with the prosecutor she chose to lead the investigation, Nathan Wade, and financially benefitted from the relationship through vacations and trips paid for by Wade.

Earlier in the hearing, Wade testified that the romantic relationship with Willis began in 2022, after he was appointed, and that Willis and Wade both paid for vacations and trips together.

The court is in a short recess.

Georgia prosecutor Nathan Wade faced a round of questioning from one of his Fulton County colleagues, who tried to rebut allegations that District Attorney Fani Willis enriched herself by hiring Wade, who was her boyfriend at the time.

Court filings indicate Wade has been paid more than $650,000 over three years for his work on the Trump election interference investigation. Defense attorneys have argued that Willis improperly benefitted from Wade’s paycheck because he took her on fancy vacations after being paid handsomely by taxpayers.

Anna Cross, an attorney for the district attorney’s office, walked through Wade’s invoices that itemized the payments he got for his work on the investigation — and she rebutted the self-dealing claims by essentially arguing Wade was actually underpaid.

He later joked, “Are you trying to depress me?”

Nathan Wade, the lead prosecutor for District Attorney Fani Willis on the case against former President Donald Trump and allies, said he was battling cancer during the time he's been accused of engaging in a romantic relationship with Willis. 

During cross examination, Wade testified his health was vulnerable in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic because he was fighting cancer, adding that he wasn’t dating anyone at the time. 

Wade said he didn’t start an “intimate” relationship with Willis until 2022.

A former employee of the district attorney’s office earlier testified that the relationship between Willis and Wade began in 2019, well before he was selected by Willis to lead the investigation into Trump and others.

The lead prosecutor in the Fulton County election interference case accused attorneys for some of the defendants of "colluding" with lawyers for his ex-wife in their effort to get District Attorney Fani Willis and her office disqualified from the case.

That attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, previously filed a motion to unseal Wade’s divorce records, which a judge later did. Other defense attorneys have joined Merchant in the effort to get Willis and Wade disqualified, including one representing former President Donald Trump.

Donald Trump’s attorney in the Georgia election subversion case pressed the lead prosecutor Nathan Wade on why he and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis kept their sexual relationship a secret, suggesting that indicated they knew it was wrong.

Wade added that he and Willis did not want people approaching them in public, “interrupting” their time together.

“There’s nothing secret or salacious about having a private life,” the prosecutor said.

Willis and Wade are no longer in a relationship, Wade testified Thursday under questioning from Trump’s attorney Steve Sadow, saying it ended in the summer of 2023.

Sadow also asked whether the two had any “personal relationship at all” since that time, saying “and you know what I mean by that.”

Wade shot back, asking if Sadow meant “if I had intercourse with the district attorney?”

"We’re very good friends, probably closer than ever because of these attacks," Wade said. "But if you’re asking me about specific intercourse, the answer is no."

Defense attorneys in the racketeering case are barreling down this evidentiary hearing in Georgia, as they try to prove to Judge Scott McAfee that lead prosecutor Nathan Wade and District Attorney Fani Willis should be removed from the Trump case.

The questions from the defense lawyers are attempting to build on two fronts:

If the evidence exists, both could be problematic for Willis and Wade. An affidavit is a sworn statement filed in court — with potentially severe consequences if a lie is told, especially if the misrepresentation is told by attorneys, who have special ethical standards they must meet to be able to practice law.

This potentially puts them at risk on so many fronts — because an affidavit is sworn, because they have law licenses, and because the future of the racketeering case potentially hangs on their ability to continue to work as prosecutors on it.