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Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, will take the witness stand for a second day of questioning Friday morning as a hearing continues over whether her romantic relationship with the special prosecutor in the Georgia election interference case presents a conflict of interest.
In the hearing, which will resume at 9 a.m., the defense is seeking to disqualify Ms. Willis and Nathan Wade, the prosecutor she hired to run the case against former President Donald J. Trump and his allies, accusing Ms. Willis of benefiting financially from the relationship.
The argument has been pressed primarily by Ashleigh Merchant, the lawyer for Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign official and a co-defendant in the case. Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade have acknowledged that they had a romantic relationship but said it had begun after he was hired on the case and that neither person had profited from it.
Friday is expected to be another full day of testimony. Ms. Willis is set to face questions from lawyers on the district attorney’s legal team and possibly the defense, and both sides said they intended to call several more witnesses to the stand.
On Thursday evening, Ms. Merchant said that after the testimony from Ms. Willis, two more witnesses might be called on Friday. And Anna Cross, a lawyer who appeared on behalf of the district attorney’s office, said that the state expected to call three or four witnesses, which she expected would take four to five hours.
The judge, Scott McAfee, who is presiding over this hearing as well as the larger election interference case against Mr. Trump and his allies, told the court on Thursday evening that he doubted that arguments would be finished on Friday and that he did not intend to issue a ruling yet, opening the likelihood that the hearing would continue next week.
Ultimately, if the judge decides to remove Ms. Willis, her entire office and Mr. Wade from the case, as the defense has pushed for, it would delay and potentially derail the election interference case in which four of the 19 defendants, including some of Mr. Trump’s most ardent 2020 defenders, have already pleaded guilty.
On Thursday, the two lead prosecutors, Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade, sat on the witness stand for hours while defense lawyers grilled them about their personal lives and their finances involving their travel together and attempted to raise doubts about the prosecutors’ assertions that Ms. Willis had repaid Mr. Wade with cash for her share of expensive trips while they were dating.
Ms. Willis sparred with the defense lawyers and angrily accused them of spreading lies about her and Mr. Wade.
“I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial,” she told Ms. Merchant at one point. It is the defendants, she said, who were on trial for trying to steal an election.
In another key moment on Thursday, Robin Bryant-Yeartie, a former friend of Ms. Willis’s, took the stand and disputed the timeline cited by Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade for when they had started dating, which they said was in early 2022. (Mr. Wade also testified on Thursday that they had ended their romantic relationship last summer.)
Defense lawyers have said that the relationship between the two prosecutors started before Mr. Wade was hired in November 2021. On Thursday, Ms. Bryant-Yeartie testified that she had “no doubt” that the two had started a romantic relationship before Mr. Wade’s hiring.
Prosecutors working for Ms. Willis’s office said that Ms. Bryant-Yeartie had had a falling out with Ms. Willis and that though she had been a friend for many years and had briefly worked for Ms. Willis in the district attorney’s office, she had resigned in 2022 and the two had stopped speaking.
Richard Fausset and Danny Hakim contributed reporting.
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