Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) did not mince words the first time she spoke publicly after accusations surfaced that she was in a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the lawyer she had hired to lead the election interference case against former president Donald Trump and his allies.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am a little confused. I appointed three special counsel, which is my right to do. Paid them all the same hourly rate. They only attack one,\u201d Willis said during a deeply personal speech at a Black church in Atlanta on Jan. 14 \u2014 the weekend commemorating the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.<\/p>\n
Willis and Wade are Black. The other two special prosecutors on the case are White. Willis\u2019s implication was clear: Racism was at the heart of the effort to disqualify her from the case and dismiss all the charges.<\/p>\n
The facts are less clear. Willis and Wade have acknowledged the relationship and sparked widespread agreement that it was improper to date someone she had hired. Additionally, public records show Wade has actually been paid more per hour than one of the other prosecutors, contrary to what Willis claimed.<\/p>\n
Yet it\u2019s hard to argue that race hasn\u2019t infused the controversy. Since launching an investigation into Trump more than three years ago, Willis has faced a torrent of violent and racist threats that forced her to move out of her home and, allies say, influenced the way she views public criticism of her work. Now, she unabashedly casts questions about Wade\u2019s qualifications for the job and criticism of her own behavior as racist. The defense lawyers, meanwhile \u2014 most of whom are White men \u2014 have bristled at the accusations, yet they have also described Willis as incompetent, dishonest and, in one instance, unable to put her dress on correctly \u2014 all characterizations that many of her allies say are belittling and cruel and, therefore, tinged with racial insensitivity if not outright racist.<\/p>\n
All of it has muddied public opinion about Willis. With the judge overseeing the case expected to decide in the coming days if Willis and her office should be disqualified, supporters have rushed to defend the first Black woman elected district attorney in Georgia\u2019s largest jurisdiction, even if they are conflicted about her actions. Critics have accused her of improperly using race to sidestep the allegations of misconduct, with Trump\u2019s lawyers arguing that Willis\u2019s race-focused church speech is itself grounds for her removal from the case.<\/p>\n
In that speech, Willis said that she expected her critics would be angered when she called \u201cthem out on this nonsense.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFirst thing they say, \u2018Oh, she\u2019s going to play the race card.\u2019 But \u2026 isn\u2019t it them playing the race card when they think I need someone in some other jurisdiction in some other state to tell me how to do a job I\u2019ve been doing almost 30 years?\u201d Willis said.<\/p>\n
Defense attorney Craig Gillen, who represents former Georgia GOP chairman David Shafer, argued the opposite in court earlier this month: \u201cShe was the one playing the race card in a way, to try to deflect from her own conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n
As outraged as some of the defendants were by the church speech, it was not unusual for Willis, who often talks about being a Black woman and a prosecutor, to riff on race \u2014 and it was welcomed by many of her supporters, particularly in Atlanta\u2019s Black community.<\/p>\n
One is Andre Dickens, the mayor of Atlanta, who is also Black and who showed up in court a few weeks later when Willis was scheduled to testify to show his solidarity.<\/p>\n
\u201cFani Willis is not on trial,\u201d Dickens (D) told reporters after the hearing. \u201cI wanted to go into the court and make sure I looked at everybody and let them know that she is not on trial.\u201d<\/p>\n
Within weeks after Willis took office in January 2021, she came under harsh criticism for her prosecution decisions \u2014 and the threats against her began.<\/p>\n
At first, they were mostly tied to her prosecution of rapper Young Thug, who is on trial for alleged gang activity in the Atlanta area. Then Willis launched an investigation of Trump\u2019s attempts to try to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, leading to felony charges in August against Trump and 18 of his allies.<\/p>\n
She has had her home address published and has had false 911 calls made to her home. Her voice mail inbox has become a steady stream of hate-filled messages, with some callers wishing for her death, telling her to watch her back or threatening to target her family. Some used racist slurs such as calling her a \u201cmonkey\u201d and the n-word. Willis moved out of her South Fulton home, stopped going to the grocery store and now travels with a security detail of at least four officers, who often vary her route to the courthouse, she has said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a lonely time,\u201d Willis testified on Feb. 15. \u201cI was very appreciative to the citizens for giving me this responsibility and this duty. But what I very, very quickly learned is that this is a very isolating job.\u201d<\/p>\n
One Alabama man, Arthur Ray Hanson II, faces federal felony charges stemming from threatening voice mails he left for Willis as well as Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat. Hanson referred to Willis as a \u201cbig fat black a\u2013.\u201d One lawyer for Hanson, Timothy Mays of Duluth, Ga., suggested that Hanson did not address Willis in the first person and therefore did not commit a crime \u2014 but the transcript of his voice mail suggests otherwise.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny time you\u2019re alone, be looking over your shoulder, because I\u2019ve been informed that there\u2019s people that are going to want to f\u2014 you up,\u201d he told Willis on the recording. \u201cNot just you but your whole entire f\u2014ing piece of s\u2014 family. So all of you sorry a\u2013 coons that are coming after Trump because you\u2019ve got this power \u2014 watch your back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then in early January, Trump co-defendant Mike Roman filed a motion accusing Willis of hiring Wade in November 2021 while in a romance with him, and then profiting from the hire by allowing him to take her on \u201clavish\u201d international trips.<\/p>\n
In the weeks that followed, the racist messages to Willis \u2014 some of them anonymous and difficult to trace \u2014 ramped up significantly in volume and tone, according to a sampling of them obtained by The Washington Post.<\/p>\n
Willis received an email with her picture in it and the words, \u201cYou god damn N\u2014\u2013.\u201d Another email shows her face imposed on a gallows. Another note, this one handwritten, says, \u201cWhat? Some crackers have been b\u2014\u2014\u2019 about you putting that black buck of yours on the payroll? What\u2019s their business? Don\u2019t they now that\u2019s the way n\u2014\u2014 function?\u201d The note ends with the phrase, \u201cSLAVERY FOREVER.\u201d<\/p>\n
Willis said during a live interview at The Post last fall, \u201cIn the last three years I\u2019ve been called the n-word so many times, I couldn\u2019t even think to count how many.\u2019<\/p>\n
Now, the probing of Willis\u2019s private life has unleashed a new round of bigoted attacks perpetuating ugly sexual stereotypes about Black men and women.<\/p>\n
A few weeks after Roman\u2019s filing, a woman showed up at a Fulton County Board of Commissioners meeting with a prop \u2014 a foot-long hot dog labeled \u201cNathan\u2019s.\u201d \u201cNothing comes between me and my Nathan\u2019s hot dog,\u201d the woman said during the public comments portion of the meeting. \u201cCome on up in here now, my dark and lovely lunch.\u201d Commissioners did not comment on the remarks, as is customary during the public comments periods of their meetings.<\/p>\n
In a similarly vulgar attack, a video emerged on social media showing a man testifying in court about a woman whose mobile phone is named \u201cgorilla grip p\u2014\u2013 pal\u201d \u2014 a lewd reference to female anatomy.<\/p>\n
The video was from a New Mexico trial on the fatal shooting during the filming of the movie \u201cRust.\u201d But a false claim that the man in the video was talking about Willis quickly spread on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Among those who amplified the claim: Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.), who published a tweet saying his favorite glue is Gorilla \u201ccause it\u2019s got the best grip.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesman for Collins, James Winner, declined to explain the tweet in an email, saying, \u201cWe certainly disagree with the characterization of generating racist content, although these days some people think everything is racist so that\u2019s a moving target.\u201d<\/p>\n
Race has repeatedly popped up in testimony, court filings and even email exchanges between Willis\u2019s team and the defense lawyers for Trump and his co-defendants.<\/p>\n
The issue bubbled over in a series of email exchanges between the prosecution team and defense lawyers in January, around the time Roman\u2019s lawyer had filed the motion seeking Willis\u2019s disqualification. In the exchange, Steve Sadow, Trump\u2019s lead attorney, said he had grown frustrated that he had not gotten responses from the prosecution to questions sent two weeks earlier about the discovery process.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the life of me, I cannot understand why you refuse to respond,\u201d Sadow wrote, according to two people who saw the exchange but requested anonymity to describe a private conversation.<\/p>\n
That prompted Daysha Young, a senior deputy on the prosecution team, to admit that she had deemed some of the defense\u2019s emails not worthy of a response because they were \u201cdisrespectful and condescending\u201d and \u201clacking both professionalism and decorum.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said the state would \u201ccontinue to provide all defense counsel with discoverable evidence\u201d but would not allow \u201cdefense counsel to bully the state into providing information to which they are not legally entitled.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking for herself and for Willis, she also wrote: \u201cWe are both aware, especially as African American women, some find it difficult to treat us respectfully.\u201d<\/p>\n
Willis then weighed in.<\/p>\n
\u201cYoung\u2019s words, although hard to hear, are true,\u201d she wrote. \u201cIn the legal community (and the world at large), some people will never be able to respect African Americans and\/or women as their equal and counterpart. That is a burden you do not experience. Further, some are so used to doing it they are not even aware they are doing it while others are intentional in their continued disrespect.\u201d<\/p>\n
The exchange did not ease divisions. Sadow replied that Young\u2019s email was \u201coffensive, uncalled-for and untrue.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo defense counsel has treated you or your prosecutors in a disrespectful or condescending manner,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThe relationship among counsel in our case has nothing to do with race or gender, nor should it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the courtroom a few weeks later, race again came up as Willis\u2019s father, John Floyd III, testified about his daughter\u2019s explanation that she had given Wade cash to cover travel expenses. Defense attorneys had scoffed at the claim, accusing Willis of conveniently citing a method of payment with no records available to prove it. Gillen, Shafer\u2019s lawyer, said in court that the explanation \u201cdoes not pass the smell test or the straight-face test.\u201d<\/p>\n
Floyd testified that he had always taught his daughter to keep large amounts of cash in her home \u2014 and to carry cash out in the world to allow her the financial freedom to leave uncomfortable situations such as bad dates. He and others said it is a common practice among Black Americans that grew out of discriminatory practices by banks and credit-card companies who refused to do business with people of color.<\/p>\n
Floyd knew this from experience, he told the judge. His credit had once been denied in a Cambridge restaurant when he was studying at Harvard on a fellowship. His cash had been accepted.<\/p>\n
Bishop Reginald Jackson, who leads the AME 6th Episcopal District of Georgia and sat behind Willis during her church speech in January, has attended court proceedings in recent weeks to show his support for her. He has been stunned by the racial insensitivity of some of the defense lawyers, he said in an interview. The vast majority of Black Atlantans he has spoken to feel the same way, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey kept using words like \u2018salacious\u2019 and \u2018her lover\u2019 and other language that was completely inappropriate,\u201d he said. \u201cThey implied that Ms. Willis hired Mr. Wade only to get some free trips, which is ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jackson also bristled about the attacks on Willis\u2019s claim that she keeps cash handy.<\/p>\n
\u201cSitting in the court, listening to them go on and on about that, drove me up a wall,\u201d he said. \u201cIt took everything in my power not to stand up and say something. But I said, well, I don\u2019t think I need to go to jail today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Willis\u2019s critics continue to doubt her story, noting that Willis is a professional with bank accounts, debit cards and cash apps, yet unable or unwilling to provide records of her cash withdrawals or Wade\u2019s deposits to corroborate her testimony.<\/p>\n
That same day, Willis took the stand wearing a bright pink dress with a zipper up the front \u2014 prompting one of the more absurd insults to surface against Willis.<\/p>\n
It must be on backward, critics on social media concluded. Who wears a dress with the zipper in the front, they scoffed. One breathless \u201cfashion expert\u201d speaking to conservative radio personality Glenn Beck even posited: \u201cUsually if [a dress] zips up the front, the zipper is a little more decorative.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess she really is that stupid,\u201d one person opined on X.<\/p>\n
One of Trump\u2019s co-defendants in the case, who did not want to be named in connection with the issue, texted a reporter: \u201cIs she wearing her dress backwards?\u201d<\/p>\n
She was not. Every picture of her dramatic testimony that day clearly showed seams sewn down the front to accommodate a woman\u2019s bust. A vertical slit along the hemline was exactly where it belonged \u2014 in the back. And a screenshot provided to The Post of Willis\u2019s order history at Amazon, where she had bought the garment on Jan. 30 for $42.99, describes it as a \u201cFront Zipper Tie Waist\u201d business dress. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post.)<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is an absurd contradiction between the notion that Willis is a legal genius who has assembled a vast array of forces to maneuver a complicated case through two grand juries and an indictment against Trump and a host of his acolytes, but at the same time she can\u2019t put her dress on right,\u201d said Norm Eisen, an ally of the prosecution who served as special counsel to the House of Representatives\u2019 first impeachment of Trump. \u201cRacism is historically marred by that kind of illogic.\u201d<\/p>\n
A few days later, at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp gave a talk titled \u201cWhat You Talkin Bout Fani Willis,\u201d a play on a popular catchphrase from the 1980s sitcom \u201cDiff\u2019rent Strokes,\u201d which was about two Black youths from Harlem taken in by a wealthy, White Park Avenue family.<\/p>\n
During the roughly 18-minute conversation, the two men took shots at Willis as they discussed how the charges against Trump in Georgia and elsewhere reflected a \u201cweaponization\u201d of government against \u201cwe the people.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all saw her attitude on display when she took the stand,\u201d Jordan said.<\/p>\n
A Jordan spokeswoman called the premise of this story \u201cbeyond ridiculous\u201d and defended Jordan\u2019s focus on \u201cconstitutional oversight of the potential misuse of federal funds\u201d by Willis\u2019s office. A Schlapp spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
During the talk, Schlapp brought up how Willis had testified that she prefers Grey Goose to wine when asked questions about a trip she took with Wade to Napa Valley wine country. Willis was wasn\u2019t invited to the conference, he said, \u201cbut there\u2019s a Fani sandwich with a chaser of Grey Goose vodka \u2014 if you have enough cash, ready cash, in your pocket.\u201d<\/p>\n
The crowd of Republicans laughed.<\/p>\n
Holly Bailey in Atlanta contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) did not mince words the first time she spoke publicly after accusations surfaced that she was in a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the lawyer she had hired to lead the election interference case against former president Donald Trump and his allies. \u201cI am a little confused. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2094,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}