The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Trump case filing shows Fani Willis’ thread getting thin
Court records show Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade called each other more than 2,000 times and texted nearly 10,000 times in an 11-month period in 2021.
That demonstrates one thing: They sure love to talk to each other.
Perhaps she should have hired Wade much earlier to the Donald Trump election interference case. Wade certainly was in constant contact with the DA as the criminal case was ramping up.
That’s an average of six calls a day for 11 months straight and 30 texts a day. That’s a level of connectedness not usually reached by teen BFFs.
The disclosure of these communications came Friday in yet another blockbuster filing in the case. In this, attorneys for Trump introduced cellphone records to try and show that the Ws were having an affair before Wade was hired onto the case. And, more importantly, that the two lied in court when they testified that their romance didn’t start until early 2022, months after he was hired as a special prosecutor to lead the case.
It’s an effort to get the two disqualified from prosecuting the case and to get the whole operation to collapse under its own weight. Basically, if Willis is removed from the case by Judge Scott McAfee, then her office would be removed, and it’s hard to see another Georgia DA wanting to take it and have the circus come to their town.
Cellphone records for Wade’s phone indicate he (or at least his phone) was in and around the Hapeville neighborhood where Willis lived at least 35 times before he was hired on in November 2021. The defense, led by Trump attorney Steve Sadow, wants to disprove Wade’s testimony that he visited her condo perhaps 10 times in 2021 before he was hired.
To make matters more prurient, Trump’s team say the records indicate Wade’s phone twice came to the vicinity of her home very late at night and left very early in the morning.
Willis’ office said Friday “we are preparing a response (to the court) now.”
The Trump case hit 11 on the Sensation Scale last month when Trump co-defendant Mike Roman alleged that Willis had hired her boyfriend, Wade, and that he had taken her on trips. They alleged it was sort of a quid-pro-quo relationship — that he received almost $750,000 of work and she got some trips.
The allegation that she hired her boyfriend so he could wine and dine her is pretty much a stretch. (She also testified she paid Wade back, always in cash. That explanation was a “hmmmmm” moment.)
But the whole legal sideshow has forced them to testify as to when they became a coosome twosome, which they said was early 2022. Now they are locked in on that, and the whole thing seems to hedge on whether they lied in their testimony this month. Judges don’t like that, even rookie jurists
like 35-year-old McAfee.
Former Gov. Roy Barnes, who was Willis’ first choice to lead the prosecution in the Trump case, said there was no conflict of interest between Willis and Wade enough to get them removed from the case. He said the hiring for trips scenario “is a convoluted theory.”
Also, the law doesn’t preclude attorneys who are boyfriend and girlfriend (or even husband and wife) from working with or against each other in cases. So that theory also seems to be thin.
“She doesn’t have a financial interest in the case, so I don’t see any basis to disqualify her,” Barnes told me.
What if they lied in court as to when they started a romantic relationship?
“That’s a different issue, but I still don’t think it’s a disqualifying factor,” he said. “Perjury has to be material to the case. If the date is not essential, then how is it material?”
Anthony Kreis, a Georgia State University law professor who was in court when Willis testified, doesn’t think the cellphone records are enough to remove the DA. First, he said, this doesn’t convincingly contradict their testimony. Second, he said cellphone evidence often is not precise to a certain location.
Earlier this month, former DeKalb County DA J. Tom Morgan, a Democrat, joined 16 other attorneys to file a “friend of the court” brief in support of Willis, saying she should not be disqualified.
“Who really cares when the affair started,” Morgan told me Friday, adding, “Keeping an affair secret is like trying to sneak the dawn past a rooster.”
But if they got caught in a lie, “Then they violated honesty before the tribunal. And that is serious. Lying to the court is serious.”
“This would change the ballgame if (Trump’s attorneys) can prove it,” Morgan said. “It’s circumstantial evidence but...” He trailed off and paused, adding, “It’s circumstantial evidence.”
Former Gwinnett County DA Danny Porter, a Republican, said the cellphone evidence “is compelling, but it doesn’t prove the relationship.”
But, he added, “The thread is getting thinner, the thread holding up their denials. The defense definitely seems to keeps chopping away” at Willis.
Porter, who has supported Willis and is no fan of Trump, suggested a path where Willis could keep the case alive.
“She could withdraw from the case citing the circus-like atmosphere and wall herself off (from its prosecution),” Porter said. In that scenario, two of the other lawyers brought in by Willis, Anna Cross and John Floyd, could continue on.
“It’s a case that needs to be tried,” Porter said. “The underlying credibility of the election is at stake. Before we move on from 2020 and all the business that the election was stolen, you have to try this case.”