Fani Willis may have blown it in court on Thursday if you're using the pro-boxing point system, and you can read about that in Matt's story nearby, but don't be surprised if the fulsome Fulton County, Ga., DA doesn't get reelected later this year for her witness stand performance. Willis was telegraphing an entirely different message to her voters even as she combatted these allegations of unethical behavior and personally enriching herself with taxpayer money.
Though she said she would not testify, Willis surprised her own prosecutors by marching to the witness chair to mop up the mess made by her man Nathan Wade, in his disastrous testimony. The stakes were high. If she couldn't pull it off she could be thrown off the case that would be the crown jewel of her career: the RICO case against Trump and others.
The targets of Willis's prosecution allege that Wade was named special counsel after they were romantically attached. That's an ethical canon no-no and they want her thrown off the case.
Indeed, Willis's former best friend testified in the hearing that Willis and Wade were "hugging and kissing" in 2019, contrary to their previous attestations. Judges don't like it when they're lied to.
But the dismissive DA snapped at the attorneys questioning her, and at one point held up the 127-page document and accused an opposing attorney of lying. The message victim here:
Fani Willis over-explained every answer in an unstinting effort to "clarify" her already torturous answers. She was explaining to the crowd at home why she paid her boyfriend in cash. At one point, Willis kept going so far afield that the judge told her that if she didn't actually answer the questions, he'd strike all of her testimony.
Fani Willis is no dummy. After the boyfriend biffed his testimony, she knew she had to explain how she derived no personal benefit from the tropical vacations, wine tastings, and cruises she'd experienced with Wade that he paid for with the $650,000 in legal fees he'd been paid since she appointed him to Get Trump.
The explanation was ... her daddy.
Let me say here that for the record, I'm white, I don't live in Atlanta, and have not once read any "Selena Montgomery'" bodice-ripping soft-core romance novels, but I have picked up a few things about black women from my copious Real Housewives watching, black Twitter/X reading, and black podcast listening. And, you know, talking to people.
Fani Willis's dissembling on the stand boiled down to a few themes. Fani wanted her voters to know that she honors her heritage, listens to her daddy, pays her own bills, is no floozy, is sometimes lonely, would never "emasculate a black man," is the mother of my house, and is the walking embodiment of a Beyoncé female empowerment song. You won't break her soul! And she'll snap at anyone who tries to call her out, like the judge.
Fani Willis says her daddy told her to keep money on her because he wanted her to have the means to get away from any man who got out of pocket.
Willis told the world, including the gang thugs she told the court she was afraid of, that at any point in time, she has as much as $10,000 in cash at her home in case of emergencies (smart) because that's what her daddy told her to do (smart). It doesn't, however, explain why she supposedly paid back her boyfriend in cash for the lavish travel with the money he made from his special counsel paycheck. And that's why she paid thousands of dollars in cash rather than using Venmo, CashApp, or a bank transfer. She icily told the attorney questioning her that she doesn't use checks.
Fani knows from prosecuting her apparently frequent RICO cases that gangsters launder money or pay in cash so they can hide the money and avoid detection. "Where did the money come from?" she was asked. "From hard work and the sweat of my brow," she told one of the attorneys. You'll just have to take her word for it because she can't provide any receipts, recordings, or bank transactions for any income or outgo information of these payments.
Her daddy told her to do it. Southern women and men appreciate this.
But Willis knows what she did was wrong because she said so when she ran for office. Her predecessor did the same thing. She talked about it before the election.
Fani Willis may get kicked off the case for unethical behavior in a court, but this Southern ideologue may be reelected in the court of public opinion.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member