This morning, one story’s ample body eclipsed all the other news and we have a single-topic special edition roundup: the dramatic first day of Fani Willis’s testimony in Atlanta. By now you have probably already seen lots of clips and read dozens of hot takes. As a litigator with experience in these types of cases, I couldn’t resist, so I’m going to dig a little deeper into this remarkable and important story and try to give you some commentary and context you haven’t heard yet.
Corporate media wants you to view this two-day hearing as a desperate distraction, a wild, last-ditch effort by the Trump Defendants to deflect from their own misdeeds by prying into the prosecution’s personal lives. Don’t be misled. You are watching history unfold. The players, DA Fani Willis and Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade, are meant to occupy chapters in history books as the courageous crimefighters who rescued democracy. With all our fates intimately intertwined with those of Willis and Wade, it is imperative that we know just who are they?
Nothing like this has ever happened in the Country’s 248-year history. The paramount question of ultimate importance is whether it will ever happen again.
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Corporate media did its level best to put a happy face on yesterday’s widely-viewed courtroom events, but the UK Guardian’s headline asked the only question that matters: “
After salacious hearing, can Fani Willis regain control of Trump case?” Following a full day of televised testimony, around 3pm in the afternoon, even while her lawyers were still arguing with the judge over whether she should be required to testify, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis strode angrily into the courtroom demanding to take the stand, in an ill-fitting pink dress, with her lapel flag ironically pinned sideways. Then for two hours Fani broke every rule for witnesses.
Out of morbid professional interest, I watched way too much of Fani’s testimony, for too long, and too much of her lover Nathan Wade’s testimony before that.
Generally speaking, both witnesses answers were extremely well prepared, much better than I would expect from the caliber of intellects on display. In other words, the two dummies obviously had help.
There were no legal bombshells, no tearful admissions, no “did you order the code red!!” moments or dramatic Perry Mason confessions. Willis’ and Wade’s story, as absurd and unbelievable as it was (and is), mostly held together under intense examination by surprised defense lawyers doing their best to nitpick a previously unheard and unlikely explanation that mysteriously sprang out of a box for the first time yesterday.
The pair of law enforcement professionals adopted the fraudster’s classic excuse: all the critical transactions that cleared everything up and resolved all the problems happened without records or receipts because it was all done in cash. They never wrote any of the payments down anywhere because they just trusted each other. They never mentioned all the cash payments in any text messages or emails or anything because just because. Mostly it was Fani paying Wade back, for squiring her through a series of sensuous, all-frills romantic vacations in exotic, high-roller destinations like Belize, Aruba, and Napa, California, where she toured wineries and noshed at five-star restaurants.
Considering all her adulterous time off, the legitimate question of how Fani got any work done at the office was unanswered and unanswerable.
The details of their alibis would only infuriate you, such as Fani’s claims she’s never used checks, that she keeps large amounts of cash around wherever “she lays her head,” but can’t account for exactly where the cash came from (“When I took out a large amount of money on my first campaign, I kept some of the cash of that”), and that she never asked for receipts or any statement in order to know how much to pay Mr. Wade, just his word, because he is such an honest fellow.
Wade was equally awful. He was heavily coached, and spouted ready made, well-rehearsed, barely-believable explanations explaining away all his conflicting prior testimony.
For instance, he claimed to have paid for the travel using his work credit card — which is why he previously denied under oath having any receipts, since he thought that question only applied to his personal accounts. He said Fani always paid him back in cash (triggering tax lawyers because that is classic tax evasion, but you can be sure some accountant somewhere is busy amending his returns right now). Wade claimed that, when he denied having a relationship with Willis in his divorce affidavit, it was based on his subjective, Clintonesque perception that his marriage had ‘really’ ended in 2015 when things got bad, so he — a lawyer — thought the questions about ‘other relationships’ only applied to pre-2015 ones.
I’m barely scratching the surface, as both liars testified for several hours. Fani’s testimony was not finished, and she’ll resume again this morning. The lawyers for all sides probably worked all night long. Fani’s lawyers worked to try to repair the damage caused by the DA’s bad conduct on the stand, and the Trump Defendants’ lawyers worked to try to find holes in the brand-new stories that were unveiled for the first time at trial, which exposed a major weakness in their strategy that Willis and Wade took full advantage of.
The weakness was the Defendants’ lawyers never had a chance to take Willis’ and Wade’s depositions. Which meant the two corrupt officials could say pretty much whatever they wanted on the stand, depriving the Defendants’ lawyers any chance ahead of trial to find evidence disproving the bizarre claims. Put another way, it is often said about trials that “Rule Number One is:
never ask a witness a question if you don’t already know the answer.”
The Defendants’ lawyers were forced to break that rule with nearly every question they asked, because they never had a chance to first ask their questions at deposition, which is how things normally work. Had those depositions happened, yesterday would have gone
very differently and Willis and Wade would not have had free rein to propose a literally unbelievable excuse.
Today, the Defendants’ attorneys may have a chance to repair some of that failure, assuming they pull all-nighters last night. But they still might already have won the war.
It's a special Fani Willis roundup this morning. Apart from all the hot takes, what did yesterday's testimony really accomplish? Something miraculous.
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