Well, my my my. The disqualification hearing for Fani Willis in the Fulton County RICO case began this morning, and it's already going south for the DA and her boyfriend, Nathan Wade. In a filing with the court two weeks ago, Willis acknowledged having a romantic relationship with Wade, but testified that it began after she hired Wade to run the RICO prosecution in October 2021.
According to a witness called by defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant, a personal friend of Willis, the DA lied in that court filing. The Willis-Wade relationship began two years before Wade's contract with Willis, as the AP reported:
A friend of District Attorney Fani Willis testified Thursday that Willis’ personal relationship with a special prosecutor began before he was hired in the election interference case against Donald Trump.
Robin Yeartie’s testimony directly contradicts Willis’ statement that the relationship with Nathan Wade didn’t begin until after Wade was hired. Yeartie was called to testify in a hearing to determine whether Willis should be removed from the case accusing Trump and others of conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the state.
Newsweek aptly calls this a "bombshell":
A former "good" friend of Fani Willis has said that the Fulton County District Attorney started dating the special prosecutor she hired to prosecute former president Donald Trump's Georgia election interference case in 2019. ...
Robin Yeartie, who said she was close friends with Willis after meeting in college in the early 1990s until 2022, testified that Willis and Wade began dating shortly after meeting at a conference in late 2019.
"Former" is also apt in this instance, presumably.
Why is this important? Attorneys cannot willfully lie or misrepresent the truth in court filings. They risk both perjury charges and disbarment for doing so. They can refuse to answer and risk a contempt charge, and then hope an appellate court will intervene. But that's not what Willis did; she declared that her relationship started in 2022. Yeartie's testimony exposes that as a lie, assuming Judge Scott McAfee finds it credible. And that alone could and almost certainly would disqualify her in this case, forcing an end to Fulton County's participation in the case.
That's still a big if, but Yeartie moved the ball quite a distance to that today. We'll see if Merchant has any other witnesses willing to testify to it.
At the moment, Merchant has Wade on the stand and is grilling Wade on his own prior representations to this court and in his divorce. He's trying to dance around conflicting claims over the receipts and bank records over his travel with Willis. I don't know if Wade's semantics are impressing the judge, but I don't think they're impressing anyone else.
Update: This arrangement seems curious, and maybe more so for Wade's business partners:
Nathan Wade testifies that he paid for all the vacations he took with Fani Willis with his business credit card.
— Salem News Channel (@WatchSalemNews) February 15, 2024
And that Willis reimbursed him in cash.
Video: CSPAN pic.twitter.com/DVGjLhpiTY
I'm not sure it will interest McAfee as much, although it certainly looks a bit deceptive.
Update, 2:57 pm ET: Fani Willis has dropped her objection to the subpoena from Ashleigh Merchant and will testify after all. Get the popcorn ready. Nathan Wade has been a terrible witness, so perhaps she feels the need to clean up.
The hearing continues on a live YouTube stream below. I'll update as circumstances change. Update: The AP stream died, but the 11Alive feed is still up:
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