All Episodes
Previous Next
Plain Text
Feb. 16, 2024 - The Megyn Kelly Show
01:43:37
20240216_explosive-da-fani-willis-and-nathan-wade-testimony
|

Time Text
Explosive Lunch with Judge Willis 00:04:15
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at noon.
Hey, everyone.
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
I'm Megan Kelly, live from the Bahamas today.
We're on vacation for this President's Day holiday, but what's happening with this Fannie Willis case was just too amazing to miss.
So coming to you live from south of Dave Aaron Burgh's border.
He's here with us today.
He, of course, is the DA and the prosecuting attorney for Palm Beach County.
And also with us, as usual on these big days is Mike Davis, who's the founder and president of the Article 3 project.
And there have been massive and explosive developments in the Fannie Willis case, as expected, because the hearing went on all day yesterday, Thursday, and it has resumed this morning.
Less explosive today, though they're in the middle of a lunch break.
And when they come back, we expect some interesting testimony from the lawyer and friend of Nathan Wade, who tried to get out of testifying yesterday and under threat of violating the subpoena and possibly having the sheriff track him down.
We understand he's coming back after lunch.
So in any event, we'll get to what happened yesterday.
Guys, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you for having us.
Yeah, thank you.
All right.
So here I am down in the Bahamas.
I was on the Delta flight.
I had my headphones on.
I was able to get Wi-Fi.
God bless Delta.
Didn't know you could get really active, good Wi-Fi.
Listened to the whole thing, did not miss one minute of yesterday.
Sitting here poolside.
It was actually a lovely way to take in the hearing.
And I couldn't believe.
I'm just giving you my overall impressions, then we'll get into everything that happened.
Couldn't believe what I was watching.
Number one, I found Nathan Wade to be a nice man, but a complete liar.
I did not believe his testimony on the difficult things at all, not even a little.
Number two, I thought Fannie Willis got up there and I gave her some points for being extremely entertaining.
Like, all I could think was, God, part of me really would like to see her cross-examine Donald Trump because nobody would miss it.
It would have ratings like the Super Bowl.
But, and she was sort of like this cross between, you know, poor me, I've got the death threats and my daddy and all the stuff.
You're like, oh, she's humanizing herself.
And F, all of you assholes.
You know, like, I'm here to set the place on fire.
Hate all of you.
You're liars.
So that made for a lot of entertaining moments.
But again, I have to admit, I did not believe her on the core points at all.
And before I get to you guys and we talk about the specifics, I will tell you, I consulted Phil Houston.
He's literally a human lie detector.
He invented the deception detection program for the CIA that's being used right now by the CIA, by the FBI, by the Secret Service, by law enforcement, coast to coast.
He's the guy.
Spent half of his time at the CIA interrogating bad guys and the other half trying to figure out whether our own agents had gone double agent for somebody else.
So he knows he knows how to detect deception.
And I've been going to Phil for years on the sly, just saying, hey, did you see this?
She's Hillary Clinton.
Do you believe her?
Did you see Tom Brady?
Do you believe him?
And so on.
You could pick.
And it's nonpartisan.
Phil does not care about that.
He just likes to be right.
And I asked him whether he thought Fanny Willis was telling the truth.
And I'll give you the headline and won't bury the lead.
The answer is no.
He found huge indicators of deception on her part.
So that always helps, guy.
He's never guided me wrong.
And nine times out of 10, the person actually later gets outed as having lie.
You know, it's not scientific per se, but I'm just telling you what I know coming to air today.
Let's go through it.
Let's do the sound bites in particular, but first, let me just get your overall take the way I just gave mine.
I'll start with you on it, Mike.
Fannie's Unmitigated Testimony Disaster 00:15:17
I think Fannie Willis's testimony yesterday was an unmitigated disaster for Fannie Willis and her prosecution against President Trump and frankly, this anti-Trump lawfare and election interference.
It was stunning to me how she, first, it was stunning that she testified at all.
And apparently, it was her decision to testify.
She was pretty angry and rearing, ready to go in this testimony.
And she came out there very defiantly, very angrily.
And she did not have her story straight.
The problem with Fannie Willis's testimony is she has to have all of us believe that she hired her secret boyfriend, not so secret now, who was not qualified for this job.
She paid him $250 an hour, $700,000 almost.
She paid him more than others who are actually qualified.
She took these trips with her secret boyfriend who is married to the, you know, the Caribbean and Napa.
And now we learn about Belize and maybe elsewhere.
And she's, but she says that these were not illegal kickbacks and she did not illegally profit or make money off of this criminal prosecution of the leading presidential candidates and 18 others, which obviously would be absolutely illegal for a prosecutor to take kickbacks and or profit from a prosecution.
And the reason we're not supposed to believe she took kickbacks or profited from this prosecution is because she paid back Nathan Wade in cash, but she has no documentation whatsoever how she paid him back in cash.
She used Cash App to pay her rent.
And just to jump in, because I confess I wasn't really familiar with Cash App, but it's like Venmo.
It's one of those apps that allows you to make person-to-person cash transfers.
Keep going, Mike.
Yeah, so she used Cash App to pay her rent, but she didn't use Cash App to pay back for these trips, which you would obviously do to cover yourself because you're dealing with issues of bribery and violation of public oath and illegal gifts and many other potential crimes under both federal and Georgia law.
And then when they dug in to ask her, where did she come up with this cash?
She came up with this story about how her daddy told her to have six months of cash and she just had cash laying around over the years.
You know, when she went to a grocery store, if there was $50, she would just throw it in her drawer.
I mean, it was just a completely non-believable story on her part.
And I guess the question would be after she spent these thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars on these trips with her boyfriend while she's prosecuting Trump and paying him $250 an hour or $700,000.
Did she ever replenish that cash that she was using?
Did she ever go to the bank or the ATM to replenish these thousands of dollars that she supposedly used to pay for half of her trips with her boyfriend?
And of course she didn't.
Certainly no evidentiary proof of it if she did.
They didn't offer anything yesterday.
All right.
That's your overall take.
Dave, what was yours?
Well, first, it's good to be with you.
I'm so impressed you can install a sound system at your pool cabana there at the Bahamas.
There's a great little studio, actually.
So I've done it once.
did it here when the chauvin verdict broke.
Everything breaks while I'm in the Bahamas.
Anyway, keep going, Dave.
Okay.
Well, let me start where I agree with Mike and with your comments, Megan.
And that is, I also am suspicious of Nathan Wade.
I didn't think he was completely credible when he said that, yeah, she just paid me back in cash.
The reason why that's important is that he submitted an affidavit under oath that said that they went Dutch, essentially, that they were roughly, they roughly split the cost, the expenses.
And so once you say that to the court, if you're proven to lie, then it is game over.
And that's why all this is important.
And Fonnie Willis, even though she didn't submit a sworn affidavit, she did attach his sworn affidavit to her response.
And so that's why this matters.
Now, I must say this.
When I saw Fonnie Willis up there, I had similar reactions to you, Megan, in that the fire on the brimstone, I thought was more compelling than Wade's testimony.
Actually, I found her to be more credible than him.
Now, as far as whether it's enough to save the day, it'll be up to Judge McAfee.
But mind you this, I talked to my Democratic friends and they had the same impression.
We all see things through our own lenses.
And my Republican friends, they all trashed both of them.
But Fonnie Willis, I thought in her defiance, in her righteous indignation, in her explanation that her father, who was a former Black Panther, told her not to be relying on men and to hide cash.
You know, it's a story that has more credibility than him, than Wade's.
And in the end, I think it's still going to be tough for Judge McAfee to find that there's an actual conflict.
If he wants to find that there was a perception of a conflict, sure.
But since the standard is there's an actual conflict, I don't think it's proven that she lied.
I don't think it's proven there's an actual conflict.
So I think there's a decent chance that she wins the day.
Okay, that's very interesting.
I don't know.
I think once this judge decides that Nathan Wade lied to him in the sworn interrogatory and that Fanny submitted that affidavit, she would also know it was a lie.
If that, if the lie that the affair didn't begin until 2022 is outed and the judge thinks Wade lied with that, then he thinks Fanny lied because she said the same on the stand and she submitted the brief with his sworn answers.
So they're both done.
You cannot, I don't agree, Dave.
You lie to the judge under oath as the sitting DA.
You're done.
You cannot try this case.
And the people who want to see Trump burned should want that.
They should not want somebody like this trying this case because they've lost all credibility.
If this case is to have any chance of having the belief or the trust of the system.
Yeah.
What were we going to say, Dave?
Yes, Megan, I agree with you that if it is shown, it is proven.
If it is proven that Nathan Wade and or Fonnie Willis lied, it's over for both of them.
You can't say one, not the other.
They're tied in together.
But when I said that I didn't find him credible, I thought she rehabilitated both of them with her testimony.
And it reminds me of Brett Kavanaugh.
You remember when Brett Kavanaugh took the stand in front of the Senate and he had this righteous indignation, this fire and brimstone, he tried to save himself after the accusations from Dr. Blasey Ford.
And my Democratic friends thought he was terrible.
He was just a rude.
He was obnoxious.
And my Republicans friends bought into it.
They believed it and he won the day.
I see the same thing happening here.
It's all in the lens.
You see it.
Ultimately, it's not up to a jury.
It's up to this really impressive judge, Judge McAfee.
But I think because it's a relatively high standard to disqualify a state attorney, or in this case, a district attorney, I think that more likely than not that she stays on the case.
Okay, let's go through the specifics because that's what's most telling.
And we'll get to her.
I mean, I think my feeling is she was trying to look indignant and sort of violated and tough and in control.
My own impression was she seemed angry.
She seemed haughty, you know, like, I am above it all.
I don't, I shouldn't have to answer questions from you losers.
I'm angry that I'm even sitting here.
Well, why was she sitting there?
Because of her own choices.
She has no one to blame but herself.
This is not a normal thing.
This is not something we're seeing in any of the other Trump prosecutions.
This isn't a way that, you know, sometimes angry defendants use to go after DAs.
She's sitting there because she did this.
By her own admission, she started having an affair with her special prosecutor.
They went on several lavish trips all over the United States and beyond.
She didn't disclose it.
And it appears very clear to me that her affair partner and special counsel at a minimum lied under oath in his divorce proceeding.
So we know we're dealing with a liar.
I mean, that's perjury.
So, okay, let's go through it.
First things first, she tried Ashley Merchant, who's the defendant for Michael Roman, who's really been pushing this whole thing.
She tried to call Terrence Bradley, who used to be law partners with Nathan Wade and was friends with him.
And she thought she could ask him about what she posited to the court were going to be admissions by Nathan Wade that the affair had begun with Fonnie Willis long before when they admitted began in 2022.
Bradley was there under subpoena and under protest.
He wouldn't give two words.
He claimed everything that they had ever exchanged, Mike, was attorney-client privileged.
And he's going to be recalled today because the judge has already said that's not true.
Obviously, not everything is privileged between a lawyer and a client, especially when you were friends and you were law partners long before you'd ever even filed for the divorce.
And so the fact that they are fighting so hard to keep him off the stand, Mike, tells me something because I feel like if he was with Nathan Wade in 18, 19, and 20 before they filed in 21, that's when he filed for divorce, he would take the stand and say, I never saw a thing, but that's not what's happening.
Yeah, I mean, attorney-client privilege, as you know, Megan and Dave knows, applies to confidential communications between an attorney and a client related to legal advice, right?
It's not the observations made if you saw your client who happens to be your friend with his girlfriend.
That would not be covered by attorney-client privilege.
And so this blanket assertion of attorney client privilege is just not going to fly.
So that's how we kicked it off yesterday.
Then, because Ashley Merchant was running up against Terrence Bradley, saying, you know, privilege, privilege, privilege, he's obviously good friends with Nathan Wade.
She moved on from him and she called Robin Yurt.
I don't have, I can't remember her last name.
What is it?
Yeartley?
Yurty, Yurty, Yurty.
So as far as we can tell, Robin Yearty has been friends with Fannie Wade since law school, since Fanny's, or since college.
I don't think Yurty is a lawyer.
We did look, but it looks like she was just a court employee.
Anyway, they went to college together in the early 90s, stayed friends on and off over the years, close friends, but not best friends, according to both of them.
And then she worked for Fanny in the DA's office and ultimately got fired, allegedly because she improperly handled something, though there was some dispute about how much of it was you're pushed out and how much of it was I'm leaving and I don't like you people, but clearly there's some bad blood there at the ending of her professional time working under Willis.
So she got up there and this is the money sound bite where, you know, she said, basically, not without, not with these words, but she said Nathan Wade's sworn positions in his divorce proceeding and in this proceeding, both submitted under oath, that the affair didn't begin until 2022, are lies.
Take a listen.
Do you understand it that their relationship began in 2019 and continued until the last time you spoke with her?
Yes.
And from everything that you saw, heard, witnessed, it's your understanding that they were in a romantic relationship beginning in 2019.
Yes.
You have no doubt that their romantic relationship was in effect from 2019 until the last time you spoke with her.
No doubt.
Let me be very specific.
Did you talk with Miss Willis about her romantic relationship with Mr. Wade?
Yes.
Did Ms. Willis tell you on more than one occasion that she was engaged in a romantic relationship with Mr. Wade prior to you leaving the district attorney's office?
Did she tell me or did I observe?
I'm staying right now with you, tell me.
Yes.
Did she tell you that in the year of 2020?
Yes.
In the year of 2021.
Yes.
Are you certain that Ms. Wade told you, I'm sorry, Ms. Willis told you about the romantic relationship with Mr. Wade prior to November 1st of 2021?
Yes.
Now, did you also have observations of Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis together prior to November 1st of 2021?
Yes.
And are those observations, were those in a social setting?
Yes.
And did you observe them do things that are common among people having a romantic relationship?
Yes.
Such as, can you give us an example?
Hugging, kissing.
All before November 1st of 2021, correct?
Yes.
That's all I have.
Dave, that, I think it's fair to say, was the lowest moment for Fannie Willis and Nathan Wade yesterday.
What did you make of it?
Yeah, that was a bad moment.
Now, they have to overcome this by showing that she's a disgruntled employee who is lying.
The best information for Fonnie Willis is that Nathan Wade, sadly, had to undergo cancer treatments and had cancer in 2020.
So he could not be part of a relationship.
He didn't go out.
They didn't do anything together.
And also, there's no evidence that they took any of the trips before 2022.
And so that also tells you that for Fannie Wade's, Fonnie Wade's, excuse me, Fonnie Willis's standpoint, that there is some dispute about it, but no doubt that this testimony was the most damaging for both of them.
You know, I was thinking about that, Mike, that there are no trips prior to 2022, which is a helpful fact for Fannie and Nathan.
But the other piece of it is he wasn't making $700,000 from the state prior to 2022.
I mean, this is part of the theory.
Nathan Wade came into some money, like a lot of money.
And before you knew it, they were traveling the globe together.
Back in 2021 and 2020 and 19, that wasn't the case.
They were living, it sounds paycheck to paycheck.
And during COVID, nobody was traveling.
I mean, it was nearly impossible.
I'm not sure the testimony that they never saw each other, they never went out or saw each other at all is as solid as Dave suggests.
It seems like they did see each other.
They just weren't globe trotting.
The Disgruntled Affair Theory 00:11:32
But what did you think?
Well, first, you guys have both called her Fannie Willis, Fannie Wade, and I think you're getting the cart before the horse.
So let's just see how this relationship losses before we go there.
But I would say, number two, you're exactly right, Megan.
The fact that they didn't take these lavish trips until 2022 proves that this whole prosecution of President Trump and 18 others has the appearance of corruption, right?
It has the appearance that Fannie Willis has a financial stake in a criminal prosecution, that she's taking illegal kickbacks. from her boyfriend.
She's paying $250 an hour, $700,000 to prosecute a former and likely future president of the United States.
And as you all of us know, that is absolutely illegal for a prosecutor to have a financial stake in a criminal prosecution.
I have to say, I did find Ms. Yurty credible.
I thought her simple one-word answers actually worked.
Like that's what a truth teller sounds like.
You know, you guys ask me, did you have an affair with Nathan Wade?
The answer is no.
Did you ever have him over at your house?
No.
I don't feel the need to convince you or elaborate.
I'm a truth teller.
I'll just answer the questions asked.
And I thought it was interesting, like she needed to be dragged in there by subpoena too.
So I know they're going for disgruntled and I'll play you that soundbite.
But if I were disgruntled against Fannie Willis, I think I'd run to the courthouse to say the bad things about her.
I'd probably elaborate on them.
I'd probably sound angry a little in talking about what a terrible person she is.
This woman didn't do any of that.
She was there under protest, but she wasn't going to lie was how I read it.
But here's the disgruntled sort of cross-examination as Bonnie Willis's lawyer comes after Robin Yurty.
You were disciplined several times in the district attorney's office during your employment there, correct?
No.
You weren't written up ever for poor performance, Ms. Yurdy.
Once, not several.
One time you were written up for poor performance where you counseled several times about your performance in the district attorney's office.
That was subpar.
No.
Did the district attorney tell you that your performance was insufficient and that you were going to be fired?
No.
That never happened.
No.
Maybe when we were at the end, what's the question?
The question, Ms. Yurty, was, did the district attorney ever counsel you on your poor performance in the district attorney's office prior and inform you that you were going to be fired?
I don't really know how to answer that.
I'm looking for the truth.
I don't really know how to answer that.
I mean, a situation happened that wasn't my fault, and I either was going to resign or be let go.
You understood that that was the situation.
You could resign or you could be let go.
Correct, yes.
You were not welcome to stay.
No.
Okay.
So just to add to that, this is what the MSNBC type coverage has done with this witness, Robin Yurty, as a result of that exchange you just saw.
We have it queued up in SOT 22.
They're going with disgruntled.
But they started with testimony from a disgruntled former employee, Robert Robin Yurty, who was let go from the prosecutor's office.
Your one witness who testified today, Caitlin, to talk about and conflict what they had said and contradict the story of the romantic relationship with somebody who appeared to be a disgruntled employee with an axe to grind.
We heard that she's being described as perhaps a disgruntled employee.
She came out and just refuted everything that Ms. Shurty said.
Miss Shorty came off as a disgruntled employee.
And she also left the office where she was working, the DA's office, under a cloud.
Oh, she was clearly a disgruntled employee.
And the defense oversold this.
There was no evidence other than the woman who is a former friend and a former employee.
That's their evidence.
By the way, it's a personal pet peeve.
Refute gets overused.
They use it exchangeably to rebut or respond to.
No, refute means you have proven the other thing is wrong.
They're claiming that Yurty was refuted by Fannie Willis's testimony later.
That's absolutely not true.
What we have here is a she said versus a he, she said over here.
That is not refuting.
Refuting is you have proven it is false and you've won.
Okay, sorry.
It always irritates me.
So disgruntled, that's what they're going with.
I don't know.
I mean, Dave, she did, she definitely got pushed out of the DA's office under terms she didn't seem to like.
This is a judge looking at this, not a jury.
So how do you think all that plays?
If they had more corroboration, it would help the defense, but this is what they got.
And the question is, does she have motive to lie?
The answer is yes, she does.
Disgruntled or not, she does have a reason why she would lie.
Now, it is up to the judge to make a determination on credibility.
If they had more, it'd be better for them.
But I'm not sure that her testimony sitting alone is enough to prove that the relationship existed before Nathan Wade was hired as a special prosecutor.
And it does matter because they both swore in a sense that he was hired after the relationship.
Excuse me.
He was hired before the relationship began.
So that is very key here, as much key as the reimbursement of the expenses.
Yeah, those are the two issues.
So two things on that.
Number one, they said yesterday when they closed the hearing that they, the Fannie Willis team, is going to be calling at least a couple of witnesses, they said, to attack Miss Yurty and her credibility.
So, you know, we're taping this.
It's like 1230 on Friday.
Maybe that's going to happen later today.
Maybe they're going to tear this woman apart with some new evidence that we haven't seen about how she's got a history of lying.
We don't know.
Right now, we haven't seen any of that.
They certainly didn't do it on cross.
So secondly, what about that, Mike?
Because I will say, if I had Miss Yurty on the stand, I would have let her talk more.
I would have said, okay, she told you repeatedly, Fannie Willis, that they had an affair, that they were together.
What did she say?
Be specific.
Was it just, he's my pal.
We're going to the movies.
You know, and when you say hugging and kissing, did you see hugging and kissing the way if I saw you two guys at a charity event?
I'd come over, we'd have a hug, we might do the air kiss.
So like they didn't flesh any of that out and it made me like a little frustrated.
Yeah, I agree with you.
I mean, I think she gave pretty convincing testimony, but I would have liked to have heard the specifics.
Like you said, but I think it's important for us to remember that, yeah, this point is important for purposes of perjury because Fannie Willis and Nathan Wade did not want to admit that the relationship started sooner than it did for purposes of their of Nathan Wade's sword affidavit to the divorce court that Fanny Wade relied upon when she submitted that affidavit to the in response to Mike Roman's motion to dismiss.
So they're going to have a lot of problems with perjury there if that ends up being false, what they swore to both courts.
But I think if we step back, the more important point is this, that for purposes of disqualification and purposes of dismissing this case, we have to remember that everyone admits this relationship between Nathan Wade and Fannie Willis started before Fannie Willis brought the indictment against President Trump.
What is the date of the indictment again?
I'd have to pull this up.
My team will look it up.
But you're saying he wasn't indicted until 22, and they're admitting that they began the relationship.
They're admitting in early 22.
But the investigation started well before that.
Yeah, yeah.
And he was hired well before.
So Mike's point is, if you take them at their word that it was going on for all of 22, for sure they were having an affair at the time they indicted him, which I don't know.
Why is that relevant to whether they should be booted, Mike?
Well, that's when the case technically begins, right?
For purposes of these laws on disqualification and motions to dismiss.
She had a financial stake in the outcome of this case before the indictment, right?
Then they brought the indictment.
They brought a very novel legal theory, a RICO theory, with a lot of facts they have to prove.
And, you know, 19 defendants, Trump and 18 co-defendants.
That's going to be a very expensive case if you're paying your boyfriend $250 an hour to prosecute this RICO theory, this novel legal RICO theory against your political opponents.
And he has spent a lot of money.
He spent, he billed for 24 hours in one day.
He billed for trips to meet with the Biden White House, including the Biden White House counsel.
He's billed $700,000.
And Fannie Willis, who was not used to these luxurious trips before, you know, she testified on the stand about Nathan Wade having his, you know, two travel agents, one for cruise ships and one for plane rides.
And, you know, she was enamored by that on the stand yesterday.
And, you know, that started after she started paying Nathan Wade for this prosecution of President Trump.
She had a financial stake in this prosecution of President Trump and 18 others.
She was, it looks like she was taking illegal kickbacks.
All right.
So just to put a point on it, if the judge believes that they did start the affair prior to 2022, I think we all agree they're done.
They're getting booted because it means they lied in the affidavit and the supporting brief.
And then yesterday on the stand, this would be the judge saying, I don't find those denials credible.
And I believe Ms. Yurty.
And therefore, not only were you romantically involved when you hired him to work on this case, but then you lied to this court about it.
So I just think if he believes Yurty, they're toast.
They better call some witnesses to undermine Yurty today.
That would be the smart thing to do if they've got it.
Okay, but let's move on because there's a couple of other key points.
Did she line her pockets some way through Nathan Wade, thanks to all these lavish vacations, or did she pay her own way?
They tried.
They were swimming furiously yesterday with like the ducks beneath the pond to try to convince us that she did pay her fair share on these vacations.
And then there's the matter of whether Nathan Wade, separate and apart from the affidavit he submitted in this case, is already lying under oath, has already lied under oath in his divorce proceeding, which would go to his credibility in assessing points one and two.
So we'll take them in those orders.
So secondly, on the point of, did Fannie Wade, this guy keep doing it?
By the way, my team points out, they reminded me, they said they broke up.
So there will be no Fannie Wade.
That card is not, the horse is not never going to go before the cart because I guess it's over.
Missing Receipts and Cash Claims 00:14:49
Anyway, let's talk about the money and whether she did, in fact, reimburse him, because the court's going to have to make a finding on this.
Once again, it's very unclear.
He took the stand first, Nathan Wade, yesterday.
And for the first time, Mike, we heard this business about how they split all the costs because she gave him wads of cash on these multiple vacations in Bahamas and then Bahamas again and Aruba and Napa.
She just kept giving him wads of cash.
And then he was asked the obvious question, can I see a receipt?
Did you ever, you know, you two understanding that you're both prosecutors and in a potentially compromising position where this kind of issue could come up, you know, do you have a receipt?
You could show that she gave you the cash.
And he, I'll just front for the audience what's going to happen here.
He's going to say no, and then he's going to talk about credit cards and it's important.
So take a listen to the whole thing, especially the very end in SOP four.
In that interrogatory, they asked you if you had any receipts for travel with someone of the other sex up until the time you were answering it.
Is that correct?
Yes, ma'am.
And you said that you didn't.
You've already testified to that earlier.
But in this affidavit, you said you swore that you had travel expenses and shared expenses on travel with Ms. Willis.
Again, during the course of my marriage, I had no relationship or receipts.
I'm not asking you about during the course of your marriage.
I'm not going to ask the witness about to answer the question.
Continue.
I have no problem with the answer.
As it relates to receipts today, I don't have any receipts, ma'am.
So you don't have any travel receipts available to you for any travel that you did with Ms. Willis?
I don't have any receipts.
No, ma'am.
No receipts that.
So you used your business credit card for these trips, correct?
I used my business credit card for everything.
Okay.
Yes.
You used it for your kids' tuition.
Yes, ma'am.
Used it for personal travel with Ms. Willis.
Yes, ma'am.
And you have receipts from those business credit cards that you have to file with your taxes, correct?
No, ma'am.
No.
I filed a statement.
I turn over the statement.
And whatever's there on the statement, the accountant looks at it and the accountant says, okay, this is personal.
It goes over here.
This is business.
It goes over here.
Here are your taxes.
So you have those statements.
We'll call them statements instead of receipts.
You have those statements, correct?
I had the statements, yes, ma'am.
But when you answered the interrogatory under oath, you said you did not have anything to show the records of travel with Ms. Willis.
I answered the question.
I had no receipts, ma'am.
You had no receipts, but you had statements.
I ordered the statement, yes, ma'am.
Okay, Mike.
So this is one of those weasely lawyer tricks that people use to get out of saying, I didn't turn over the documents that I was asked for because I didn't want to.
I didn't want to show the receipts of my affair to my ex-wife.
And he's trying to weasel out of it by saying his credit card statement isn't a receipt.
Here's the problem with Nathan Wade and Fannie Willis's hole.
We roughly paid the same amount and Fannie Willis reimbursed me for cash, but we have no evidence of that other than both of our works.
We have no bank account transactions.
We have no other evidence whatsoever.
The problem is that, look, you have an appearance here of corruption.
You have an appearance that Nathan Wade was illegally hired by Fannie Willis, that she is paying him $250 an hour.
She hasn't, and she's taken illegal kickbacks.
She has an illegal financial interest in this criminal prosecution.
So her affirmative defense is, oh, no, no, no, no.
I paid cash for my half of these trips.
Well, guess what?
The burden shifts to her.
It's her burden to prove that she paid cash.
It's her burden to come forward and say, here's where I got the cash.
Here's the transaction in my bank account.
Here's where I took out the H, you withdrew from the ATM with this cash.
The burden's on her.
So she has not met her burden of proof in this burden shifting exercise on their bogus cover story.
And so that's where I think that she's going to lose with this judge.
Well, you're right.
Because I was actually kind of getting into his false interrogatory there and not so much their receipts in their relationship, which is the first thing we have to tackle.
And they don't have any.
And that's the bottom line.
They have no receipts whatsoever.
She was pressed on it.
So was he.
Did she go to the ATM right before she gave you wads of cash?
Did she?
No.
Did you give her a receipt when she gave you all the cash?
No.
Is there anything that would verify that she actually reimbursed you for half of this travel?
No.
None whatsoever, absolutely nothing.
And here's a little bit of that in SOT 6.
Then you tell us that Ms. Willis paid you in cash all the money for the entire trip that was a gift for you for your birthday, correct?
Yes, sir.
And I'm sure you probably have the deposit slips where you took the cash and deposited the cash into your account, don't you?
I did not deposit the cash in my account.
You don't have a single solitary deposit slip to corroborate or support any of your allegations that you were paid by Mrs. Willis in cash, do you?
No, sir.
Not a single solitary one.
Not a one.
Now, when Ms. Willis would pay you in cash, would you scamper down to the ATM with her and she drew money out of her account to pay you these thousands of dollars?
Mr. Gillen might scamper, but there's been no evidence that Mr. Wade does.
I object to the phrasing, the argumentative nature of the question on that issue overruled.
Did you and Ms. Wade scamper down to the ATM machine and have her dry out, for example, on the police trip, just on your payment would have been $2,794?
Ms. Wade?
Claire, yeah, thank you.
Pardon me?
Ms. Wade and I didn't go to police.
No, excuse me, Ms. Willis.
I'm sorry.
Did you go down to the ATM with Ms. Willis while she drew out $2,794 to pay you in cash?
Did you go to the ATM with her?
No, sir.
She didn't go to the ATM.
She carried the cash.
Oh, and so she would give you the cash.
And do you have a little place in your house where you just stack up all this cash that you apparently got to repay you for these benefits that you bestowed on her?
Mr. Gillen, if I answered that, I'm putting myself in jeopardy.
If I tell the world that I have cash someplace in my home, don't you think that that could be problematic?
No.
Did you, in your declaration, sir, it was filed in this case, did you tell the court in that declaration that the expenditure that you had provided on behalf of Ms. Willis was paid for back by her in cash?
Yes or no?
I believe that I did when I said that the expenses were split roughly evenly.
If you could point to me any place in your affidavit where you used the word cash, I would appreciate it.
I didn't use the word cash.
No, sir.
No, you didn't use the word cash, did you?
But I didn't say that she didn't give it to me in cash.
No, you just didn't tell anybody that you allegedly got paid back in cash, right?
No, I told everyone who asked today.
Yes, sir.
It's just, look, I know I've been watching the coverage, Dave, on MSNBC and elsewhere and CNN.
And what they're now saying is it's a black thing.
You don't understand.
Black people distrust the system.
This is literally what I saw on CNN earlier.
Distrust the system, and therefore they don't have checking accounts, even if they're the district attorney.
She is the system.
And they just bring wads of cash everywhere.
Okay, even if that's true, she used Cash App.
Why didn't she use Cash App to repay all these monies that she would have to know at some level could come back to haunt her given the relationship?
It's just, it's not plausible.
This is the biggest challenge for both of them is this reimbursement because I felt the same way when I heard Nathan Wade testify.
Oh, and by the way, you saw how the lawyer also mixed up Wade and Willis's last name.
We're all doing it.
Yeah, good.
It's not just me.
All right.
Well, that's the problem that that's the reason why I didn't think that Nathan Wade was too credible.
When Fonnie Willis got up and she did make it into more of a racial issue and a community issue, that her father's a Black Panther and he taught her, don't rely on guys, always keep cash around.
And that's why I believe they're going to call the father up under oath.
He's up now.
He's up now.
There you go.
And so that's important.
That's why if you have all this evidence that shows that, yeah, maybe that is plausible.
I think it's hard to then definitively say that they're lying.
I think it's going to be hard to do because the only evidence to the contrary is this one witness who said their relationship began earlier.
And, you know, she has a motive to lie.
And secondly, as weird as it sounds that they wouldn't keep any receipts.
And I share your skepticism, but her explanation, buttressed by her father and perhaps others, is plausible.
It doesn't have to be definitive proof, Mike.
I mean, this is witness testimony.
So it's up to the judge to weigh the credibility.
It doesn't have to be smoking gun proof that that's a lie.
It can be, this is obviously not true.
I don't believe them.
They're wiggling too much.
It's not plausible that there would never be an ATM withdrawal or deposit receipt by him.
And the biggest point I thought was made is that Fannie Willis, at the time she's allegedly carrying around these hunks of cash, thousands of dollars, was she had a lien against her, Mike, for some almost $5,000 against her, I think, her home, her mortgage.
I can't remember exactly, but I think that's what it was.
And that was asked of her.
And she, once again, got all defense.
Oh, now you're going to tell me how to pay my bills?
Like what we're trying to do is prove this is not plausible that you secretly had stashes of thousands while a lien was against you as again, the sitting DA.
So yeah, let's let's just try to figure out what their argument is that the people in America who have untraceable cash are apparently drug dealers, sex workers, and Fulton County prosecutors, right?
It just doesn't make sense.
And if she spent this cash to pay back Nathan Wade, her boyfriend, for these elaborate trips that she only started taking after she put Nathan Wade on her payroll at $250 an hour, $700,000 to prosecute President Trump and 18 others, where's the evidence that she replenished this cash in her house?
Where's the evidence that she followed her father's advice to have six months of cash in her house after she spent thousands of dollars on her trips to the Caribbean and Napa and wherever the hell else her and Nathan Wade went around the world?
Yeah, here she is trying to say, you know, you just don't get it.
And again, you hear a tinge here of like over and over with like, woe is me, my blood, sweat, and tears.
I got news for you, Fanny.
We all work.
We all work hard.
All of our money comes from our blood, sweat, and tears.
You don't have to overstate it and get so dramatic, but her dramatics to me were part of the deception.
Here she is in SAT 13.
So when you got cash to pay him back on these trips, would you go to the ATM?
No, lady.
You would not go to the ATM?
No.
Okay.
So Fulton County pays you direct deposit, I assume?
Yes, Fulton County and the state of Georgia both pay me direct deposits.
Okay.
So the cash that you would pay him, you wouldn't get it out of the bank.
I have money in my house.
You have money in your house.
So it was just money that was there.
When you meet my father, he's going to tell you, as a woman, you should always have, which I don't have, so let's don't tell him that.
You should have at least six months in cash at your house at all times.
Now, I don't know why this old black man feels like that, but he does.
If you're a woman and you go on a date with a man, you better have $200 in your pocket.
So if that man acts up, you can go where you want to go.
So I keep cash in my house, and I don't keep cash as good in my purse like I used to.
I don't go on many dates, but when you go on a date, you should have cash in your pocket.
So my question was: where did that cash originally come from?
If it came out of the bank, cash is fungible.
We've had cash for years in my house.
So for me to tell you the source of when it comes from, when you go to Publix and you buy something, you get $50, you throw it in there.
It's been my whole life.
When I took out a large amount of money on my first campaign, I kept some of the cash of that.
Like to tell you, I just have cash in my house.
I don't have as much today as I would normally have, but I'm building back up now.
You just put money in.
It's a very good practice.
I would advise it to all women.
I am sure that the source of the money is always the worst, sweat, and tears of me.
The money that you paid, Mr. Wade, the cash in October of 2022, you do not know where that money came from.
I do know where it came from.
It came from my sweat and tears.
Okay.
Mike, she's getting some pushback online for saying there she took money out of her campaign when she was running, and that's in her personal cash fund.
That's a hard no-nope.
Yeah, I mean, when Governor Kemp and Attorney General Chris Cardot in Georgia opened their criminal probe for perjury and subordination of perjury and bribery and false statements and gift ban violations, it sounds like they can add a campaign cash violation as well.
You can't use campaign finances for any personal use.
That's just the way it is.
And we'll see, but that statement may come back to haunt her in a different way.
You're not allowed to take campaign cash and put it in your personal coffers.
That's just against the law.
So we'll see if that comes back.
But that's her, you know, my blood, sweat, and tears led to my money.
Campaign Funds Personal Use 00:06:22
And she tried to do the feminist thing.
It was a little much, but of course, predictably, it's got the people on MSNBC like, oh, you go, girl.
Here is back to Joy Reed talking about her reaction to some of those moments in SOT 23.
And what we also saw today, frankly, was a clinic in Black womanhood, and particularly high-profile Black womanhood, right?
If you're a Black woman in this country, you don't have to be a district attorney prosecuting the former president of the United States to really understand what it means to have your integrity or your professionalism questioned or the urge to defend your character or reputation, right?
And so that's what you really saw on display today.
Yes, she was angry, but she was also insulted.
If you're questioning my integrity and accusing me of hiring somebody that I was having an affair with when I'm telling you the timeline and then asking, did my kids live at my house?
You want to know how much money I have?
Is he giving me cash?
She was insulted and rightfully so.
This idea that women of color have to sit there and be demure and take it.
There were people on social media who were saying, oh, she's coming in too hot.
No, she wasn't.
She was offended and she had a right to be offended.
You tell me, Dave, you're a DA.
Is there a special exception to asking difficult questions about possible lies when it's a black woman on the stand?
No, but I do understand why she was pissed off.
I mean, she's been getting a ton of death threats.
She's been getting a lot of hate.
And this was just a culmination of everything.
You know, remember, she ran into that courtroom and she defied her own lawyers who are trying to block the subpoena.
And she said, no, I'm going up there.
And that to me helped establish some credibility.
She just went out there, threw caution to the wind.
And I understand why she was angry.
I thought that anger was real.
I don't think that was contrived.
And now here she is forced into this humiliating hearing.
Now, to your point, the reason why she's at this hearing is because of these allegations.
These were self-inflicted wounds.
I mean, she should not have entered into this relationship with Nathan Wade.
And then if they lied, then yeah, these questions are absolutely fair to determine whether they should be disqualified.
But I understand her frustration, her anger.
And it reminded me when Brett Kavanaugh, and I mentioned this earlier, but remember when he went after the Clintons during his hearing and we're like, what does this have to do with anything?
Well, you go after the process and you have folks, your natural supportive community coming out in your defense.
And perhaps that's what she was doing here.
I want to get back to her affect and her anger in a second, Mike, but I do want to pick up on what Nathan Wade was saying about why there's no, you know, how it was all paid in cash and there's no receipts and so on.
He, that cross-examination, I think that was Trump's lawyer there pressing him on where the receipts and so on and why you haven't disclosed it before now.
I thought that was persuasive.
He submitted a sworn affidavit, Mike.
He went through, I mean, I have it here in front of me.
Here, I'll hold it up for the audience.
It's got all highlighted.
Those are mine.
Goes through in detail all the no funds paid to me in my role as special prosecutor have been shared with D.A. Willis, nor vice versa.
All the stuff he allegedly hasn't done with Fannie Willis.
And then paragraph 34, the DA and I are both financially independent professionals.
Expenses for personal travel were roughly divided equally between us.
At times, I have made and purchased travel for her and myself for my personal funds.
At other times, she's done it.
Examples of DA Willis purchasing plane tickets for the two of us with her personal funds for our personal travel are attached.
And we talked about this the other day.
All he attaches are the plane tickets that he says she purchased them for one of their cruises to the Bahamas from Atlanta to Miami.
You know as well as I do, if you're sitting there as Nathan Wade and you know she reimbursed me for everything by these big cash deposits that her daddy told her she needed to keep, you would have put that in the affidavit.
Where is it?
Yeah, it's just not credible.
And this is purely speculation on my part, but I think they should do an open records request to see if Fulton County reimbursed Fannie Willis for those plane tickets from Atlanta to Miami, those two plane tickets that she paid for.
But that's neither here nor there.
I would just say this.
Again, the burden of proof shifts to Fannie Willis to come up with evidence that she paid cash to reimburse her boyfriends for these trips around the world.
And the fact, the fact that she didn't do this when she's prosecuting the president, a former and future president of the United States, shows you at a minimum, she has horrific judgment.
You're okay.
We've got the sandwich sound bite.
Let's play it.
Mr. Let's go on and have the conversation.
I'm just asking you whether or not it was a coincidence.
It had absolutely nothing to do with this.
It's interesting that we're here about this money.
Mr. Wade is used to women that, as he told me one time, the only thing a woman can do for him is make him a sandwich.
We would have brutal arguments about the fact that I am your equal.
I don't need anything from a man.
A man is not a plan.
A man is a companion.
And so there was tension always in our relationship, which is why I was give him his money back.
I don't need anybody to foot my bills.
The only man who's ever foot my bills completely is my daddy.
Okay, so there it is.
I get it.
I kind of liked the soundbite overall.
You know, I thought it was actually a pretty good moment for her, but I have to say, it was not a good moment for Nathan Wade, right?
Like you're sitting there like, what do you mean?
Only thing a woman can do for you is make you a sandwich.
That's like, that is, isn't that the misogynistic trope of like some jerk guys?
You'll go up to him and be like, Well, what about this?
And they'll be like, Make me a sandwich.
That's this does not make Nathan Wade look good.
But her whole point was to be like, I'm the fiery one, and I would never take a man's money, notwithstanding all the evidence that she did.
Okay, um, let's let's go back to her anger because I did, it did not, I liked that soundbite.
I thought that worked.
But her, she took the stand, Dave says correctly, she took the stand over counsel's objection.
I mean, I think she knew she was going to get the judge was going to make her take the stand, but whatever.
She wanted to have this empowering moment, Mike.
So she comes out there, a gun's blazing, attacks Ashley Merchant, the lawyer for Roman, and really starts to like play into her, lean into her anger in a way, again, I think is evidence of deception.
But let's take a look at it.
Abandoning Home to Take the Stand 00:06:06
Watch.
I've been very anxious to have this conversation with them today.
Mr. Wade is a southern gentleman.
I mean, not so much.
It's highly offensive when someone lies on you, and it's highly offensive when they try to implicate that you slept with somebody the first day you met with them.
And I take exception to it.
I very much want to be here, so I'm not a hospital witness.
I very much want to be here.
Not so much that you're hostile, Miss Willis, to be an adverse witness.
Your interests are opposed to Miss Merchant's.
Merchants' interests are contrary to democracy, Your Honor, not to mine.
Okay, here's a little bit more in SOT 12.
Watch.
Your office objected to us getting Delta records for flights that you may have taken on Mr. Wade.
Well, no, no, no, look, I object to you getting records.
You've been intrusive into people's personal lives.
You're confused.
You think I'm on trial.
These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020.
I'm not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial.
Let me tell you guys something.
I know the temptation is to be like, Yeah, you go, girl, if you're on her side, but it's a classic deceptive tell when you attack the question or the questioner and sort of try to go on offense and turn it into a moment that works for you as like the fierce one in the chair.
That's classic Phil Houston stuff.
All this stuff is being done for a reason to try to turn the tables, make her look like she's the righteous one, as opposed to what a truth teller would do, which is just use the words to answer the questions asked.
And there's the judge kept saying to her, like, you're going to have a chance to make your arguments when you get, you know, your lawyer up here who gets a chance to sort of, you know, ask you questions.
And she couldn't hold it together to the point where at one point, Mike, she lost it.
And the judge was like, we're going to have to take a recess.
If you can't get it together, it's, and he might strike her testimony, he said, if you can't, you know, just answer the questions.
Here it is in SAT 17.
Did Mr. Wade ever visit you at a place that you have never been to my home in South Fulton?
2020 was before I knew that a phone call was going to be made and I was going to have to abandon my home.
As a result thereof, he never visited, lived at, came to, or has seen South Fulton you qualify that with your home in South Fulton.
That's where I lived in 2020.
Okay.
I don't understand.
You're about to give me God.
In 2020, I lived in South Fulton.
Okay.
That's the only place I lived in South Torped Fulton.
That's before I had to abandon my home, Judge.
All right.
And at my home in South Fulton.
He never came there.
Okay.
So if you don't come someplace, you can't live there.
Ms. Wells, that's, I'm going to have to caution you.
This is going to be my first time I have to caution you.
We have to listen to the questions as asked.
And if this happens again and again, I'm going to have no choice but to strike your testimony.
She was literally shaking, Mike, as we saw her there.
She just was not, she was not in control and she was extremely emotional.
And there's, I think, a reason for that.
I don't think it was righteous indignation.
I think she knew she's probably going to get booted off this case.
She knows she's caught and she went out there in such a hurry and so angry.
Megan, does she have her dress on backwards?
A lot of people ask you that question because the zipper's in the front.
I don't know.
Some dresses are like that.
Yeah, regardless, she did herself no good by coming out there being angry and indignant in that courtroom because even this judge, who I think is, you know, not exactly a fire-breathing Republican, kind of a soft judge, when you managed to piss off this judge, I think you've gone too far there, old Fanny.
Yeah, she was, I don't know, you could see her fingers are shaking while she's out there, Dave, which is kind of surprising in somebody who's a DA.
Yes, angry, but look, it could be because she's indignant, as you say, and it also could be because she is committing perjury.
She's denying something she knows is true, and she's about to be publicly humiliated, already has been, and is going to get booted off of this case, the biggest case ever in Fulton County.
Well, I'm not a body language expert like the guy you spoke with, Megan, but we all have our lived experiences and we see the world through them.
And I, as a prosecutor, have been attacked when I prosecuted cases and I see what she is saying, where it's not necessarily a lie when you say, well, you guys are the problem.
You're the one who are the defendants, not me.
I have been there and I felt that way before.
And here's someone who had to abandon her home because of all the death threats she's receiving.
And now she's being accused of essentially sleeping around and lying about it.
So I can see why she's indignant about it.
Here's what Phil Houston said, just a little bit more color of what he, you know, the former CAA guy, deception detection guy.
She exhibited a very high volume of deception, combative, uncooperative.
The most prevalent deceptive behaviors were both her verbal attacks directed toward her questioners and her failure to either directly answer some of these questions or answer them at all.
In my opinion, she appears to be trying very hard to avoid identification of the source of the cash she gave to Mr. Wade.
She was trying to prevent the questioner from pinning her down as to the nature of the physical contact she had with Mr. Wade.
The objective of her aggressive behavior appears to reflect her attempt to preclude the prosecutors from eliciting any testimony from her that will conclusively lead to serious legal consequences.
Perhaps one of her biggest concerns relates to whether or not the money she gave Mr. Wade was sourced from her government work.
Her goal is to obfuscate and stymie the prosecutor's efforts to the degree that it becomes extraordinarily difficult for them to pin any serious wrongdoing on her.
That's Phil Houston's take.
All right, let's get to the interrogatory answers because I really happen to believe this is the most devastating thing of the case.
I really do.
Nathan Wade lied under oath.
That is my clear conclusion and opinion, having listened to the testimony.
Devastating Interrogatory Lies Revealed 00:15:19
He lied in his divorce proceeding.
And it doesn't even have to, this is a separate issue from him, we believe, lying in his affidavit in this motion that he didn't start the affair until 2022.
He said in his divorce proceeding that he didn't have an affair with anybody.
He didn't have a sexual relationship with anybody other than his wife, and that he had no entertainment, no hotels, nothing, and no receipts thereof or documentation whatsoever about any of that in the course of his marriage, which was ongoing.
I mean, I'm not sure if the divorce is final, but if it's final, they just resolved the proceedings a month ago after this whole thing.
So the point is through entire 2023, they were married.
And yet we have him admitting yesterday under oath, he was having a sexual relationship with Fannie Willis.
We have him submitting under oath documents that he says show the many trips that they took together, at least receipts for one of them.
And some of the lawyers zeroed right in on this because if this judge sees this lawyer, this officer of the court lied under oath in a divorce proceeding, he's a liar.
Falsest in Uno, falsest in omnibus.
You can find him a liar on everything if you found he lied in one thing while under oath in an earlier proceeding.
So here is some of that.
It's important to go through.
Here he is just denying, first of all, that he had an affair because he claims the marriage was sort of emotionally over before it had actually ended.
This is SOT 3.
In 2022, in this affidavit, you swore that you and Willis developed a personal relationship.
Yes, ma'am.
And you said that that didn't develop until 2022, correct?
That's correct.
And that's different from what you said in your pleading in May 2023 in the divorce case, correct?
No, ma'am.
In May 2023, when you were asked if you had a, if you'd had any affairs, essentially, and you said none.
That's correct.
Okay.
So in May, you said you had not, in May 2023, in the divorce case, you said you had not had a personal relationship, an affair, a romantic relationship with anyone.
That's correct.
But you told this court in the affidavit that you did have one that started in 2022.
So that would have been ongoing at 2023.
So here I think there's a distinction, if you'd allow me to explain.
The interrogatory asked the question during the course of your marriage or to date.
It actually says, I'm going to request that the witness be come in to answer.
That's right.
So my marriage was irretrievably broken in 2015, ma'am, by agreement.
My wife and I agree that once she had the affair in 2015, that we'd get a divorce.
We didn't get a divorce immediately because my children were still in school and I refused to allow them to grow up without their father at the time.
So we waited.
We waited until the youngest graduated and we dropped her off at college and didn't file for the divorce.
So if you're asking me about the interrogatory as it relates to having the 2022 relationship with District Attorney Willis, I want to say because my marriage was irretrievably broken, I was free to have a relationship.
Okay.
Here is what the interrogatory, how it reads.
Describe each instance in which you have had sexual relations with a person other than your spouse during the course of the marriage, including the period of separation.
Including the period of separate.
I'm sorry.
Dave, I'll start with you.
It's a lie.
He lied when he said none.
That was his answer, his sworn answer.
Yeah, sure.
Seems like that.
That's another reason why I didn't find him too credible.
Now, Megan, didn't he try to go back and assert the fifth and try to amend the answers to his interrogatories?
That's weird too.
We're going to get to that.
That was another weirdness that stinks to high heaven.
This guy's going to have problems with the bar.
There's no question.
Like, you can't do this as a lawyer.
You can't do it, period, as a civilian, but you really can't lie to the court willingly as an officer of the court.
You can't without consequence.
So that was number one.
That's the first soundbite.
Did not have an affair because of the emotional separation.
That doesn't, that's not how these things work.
Then he said he admitted that he, notwithstanding the request for receipts of any hotels with a lover, he provided absolutely nothing.
You heard some of that earlier a minute ago.
He admitted that he gave none and his answer was no, I have no receipts that would show any travel with another woman to a hotel or anything else.
That's also a lie.
And then he updated his answers, which Dave just raised.
What happened was he had to give these interrogatory answers repeatedly.
He gave them similar ones December of 21, May of 23, December 22nd of 23.
I mean, that's recent.
And then January 26th of 24, he updated those answers after Ashley Merchant raised all these issues in this Trump case.
And he updated them to assert, he kind of crossed out none, which we know is a lie, to say the plaintiff declines to respond and asserts his privilege pursuant to Georgia Statute 24-5-505.
What does 24-5-505 say?
It says, I have it here: no party or witness shall be required to testify as to any matter which may incriminate or tend to incriminate such party or witness or which shall tend to bring infamy, disgrace, or public contempt upon such party or witness.
Okay, so you can't require someone to testify as to something that may incriminate them.
We know that.
That's Fifth Amendment privilege.
And you also can't require somebody to testify as to a matter which shall tend to bring infamy, disgrace, or public contempt upon such party or any member of their family.
Infamy, disgrace, or public contempt.
So he was asked about this yesterday.
Like, are you asserting the fifth?
And why?
Is it the incrimination piece or is it the other piece?
And he invented some third piece that doesn't exist.
Watch.
You updated those responses again after the motion to disqualify was filed, though, correct?
When was the motion filed?
January 8th, 2024.
When I filed the motion to disqualify you and alleged that you had a romantic relationship with Ms. Willis.
Yes.
After that, you updated these responses, correct?
Yes, ma'am.
And so your new responses, you now changed your answer from that you didn't have any of this to you're asserting the privilege under 24-5-505, correct?
Yes, ma'am.
Okay.
And both of these are under oath?
Yes, ma'am.
You also updated your response to the question about spending time with someone other than your spouse for dinner, drinks, things at restaurants, bars, hotels, or the other person's home, correct?
Yes, ma'am.
So in December of 2023, you said no to all that.
And then in January, after I filed my motion, you said privilege to all that.
Fifth Amendment privilege.
Yes, ma'am.
Okay.
And just to be clear, was it a characterization of Fifth Amendment privilege?
I thought it was a statutory privilege.
And that's right.
That's what I was just about to ask him.
So that privilege covers infamy or Fifth Amendment privilege, correct?
So it was a privacy privilege, is what I updated my response to do.
Once you filed your motion to intervene in my divorce action, I then figured that you were in talks with my former wife's divorce lawyer.
Okay.
And because of that, I asserted a privacy privilege because I didn't want the proceedings of my divorce to lead over into the proceedings in this case, which is the case that obviously you're involved in.
So your answers in December of 2023 that you didn't have any documents about any travel that you took with Ms. Willis.
That wasn't true, though, correct?
They didn't ask me about any documents regarding Ms. Willis.
A romantic partner.
They asked you for documents regarding a romantic partner.
So I'm sorry, I inserted Ms. Willis's name.
Let me rephrase the question.
They asked you for documents about travel with a romantic partner in December 2023.
And you, under oath, said you did not have any of those, correct?
I did not.
Okay.
And they asked me about gifts.
Right.
Never purchased a gift for Ms. Willis.
They asked you about receipts for dinner, receipts for drinks, hotels, bars, and restaurants.
And you said you did not have any of those.
I did not and do not have any receipts for any of those things.
And once again, he doesn't have any receipts because he only has a credit card bill.
He lied.
It's another lie.
And she did a good job, Ashley Merchant, of calling out the lie because he's trying to wiggle out, suggesting he was only asked for receipts and he didn't have those.
Here's what it says.
I read you the first one.
Here's the second one.
Identify any and all occasions in which you entertained a member of the opposite sex, including but not limited to dining and or drinking at any restaurants, bars, pubs, hotels, or person's home from the date of marriage to the present.
Identify any and all occasions in which you entertained a member of the opposite sex, including but not limited to those places.
It was not limited to give us the receipts.
It was identify all the instances and his answer was none.
Again, it's another and independent felony.
Is it not a felony, Dave?
You're the prosecuting attorney.
If it's a material misstatement, intentional misstatement, then yes, it is a, it is perjury.
Now, whether it's a felony or misdemeanor under Georgia law, I don't, I don't know, but it is a crime.
It is rarely prosecuted, but it looks bad and it could lead to disciplinary charges.
Plus, the judge could take that into account since it's raised in this hearing when he makes his ultimate decision.
Notably, his affairs may not have involved Fonnie Willis.
It could have involved other women.
And he clarified that when she, the lawyer, Merchant, said Fonnie Willis.
And he said, no, no, no.
So it could have involved others.
It may not involve Fonnie at all.
Well, we know it involved Fonnie at least once because they admit to themselves, I mean, to the court that they were having an affair in 2022.
That's their story.
The others say it went back further, but at least in 2022.
And these interrogatory answers were assigned with the lie as recently as December 22nd, 2023.
So it's just no question that he lied.
And you tell me, Mike, whether he gets to save his lie after Ashley Merchant files her motion in the Trump case by saying, making up some Fifth Amendment right to your privacy.
That's the dumbest thing I've ever seen.
It actually shows more guilt on his part that he's trying to change his prior testimony.
When you update your interrogatories or you do an errata page, you update your deposition testimony, it's to fix like honest mistakes.
Like you maybe honestly, you know, thought that it was on Monday instead of Tuesday.
It's not, you don't update a substantive test of your substantive testimony and think that you can just eliminate your perjury.
You can eliminate a lie by updating your interrogatories.
That's just not how it works.
Here's, I think it's, again, Trump's lawyer Sato who got up there and was trying to point out this exact issue in SOT 27.
How would an answer of none bring infamy, disgrace, or public contempt upon you?
So as I explained indirect of Mr. Roman's counsel, the minute she elected to intervene into my divorce proceeding, I then started to understand the bigger picture, which was that all the attorneys in the election interference case were colluding with Joycelyn's divorce lawyer.
And because of that, I said, privacy.
I don't want my divorce proceeding to bleed into this criminal proceeding.
I just didn't want that.
So you raised a privilege, if I understand, that indicated that your answer would bring infamy, disgrace, or public contempt upon you, right?
I'm going to object to the relevant answer.
That's just going to ask the answer several times.
Mr. Sena, where are we heading with this?
I think I can finish that up by saying you didn't say none again.
You asserted a privilege, correct?
That's correct.
Okay.
And you did the same thing, did you not, with number five?
That's correct.
That is, you didn't say none again, right?
Okay.
Is the answer to the interrogatory number four, as you have it in front of you, is the answer none?
Is that the truth?
The answer is to that interrogatory is as I placed it at the time I responded, sir.
I'm asking you now is the answer to that interrogatory answer none.
The answer is still privileged.
My God, I really, I have secondhand embarrassment for him.
There is, for the record, no privacy privilege to avoid answering embarrassing interrogatories.
You do what had already been done in this case, which is you ask the judge for an order to place the documents under seal so that you don't have to be publicly embarrassed.
This is a fake made-up thing.
I don't know why he's doing it, Dave, because he'd already told the lie.
Like going back and amending it to say privacy, like that doesn't cure the three-time lie you told on the earlier answers.
Yeah, maybe he's trying to do what Mike suggested, where you update your interrogatories because you made an innocent mistake and now he's got a privilege.
But no, this doesn't seem like it was just a misstatement.
It looks like it was intentional because the wording of the interrogatories are so broad that you can't get out of it by saying, no, I don't have receipts.
I actually, if they asked for just receipts, he could say, no receipts, just credit card statements, splitting hairs, but you can get away with it.
But not when they ask for everything.
When did you even have an encounter, an experience?
When did you entertain someone?
That's so broad and intentionally broadly written to encompass stuff like this.
And they asked for all documents.
If you look at, if you zoom out, we don't have all the interrogatories.
Some were leaked and we have these two and they were asking about others on the stand.
But it was clear that the interrogatories asked for all documents that relate to any of these issues, not just receipts.
He's the one who tried to limit it to receipts.
And so he's got them dead rights.
But to what end?
Broad Cabin Encounter Questions 00:04:12
Okay, so to Dave's raising the point, Mike, that this judge may say, eh, okay.
I mean, I have to say, I thought the judge got it because that lawyer, Sato, he tried to push it a bit and really drive it home that this is a lie and all and so on.
And the judge was like, I got it.
You know, let's move on.
And I believed the judge that he did get it.
Like he seemed to me to actually understand this guy had clearly been caught in a lie.
And that I don't know.
Like Dave's point is there's a chance that this judge could say, eh, he was embarrassed.
Like he lied about having an affair in a divorce proceeding.
That's a lie probably many men have told.
You know, I don't know.
Does he say, I'm not going to punish it?
Like, I'm not the judge in the divorce proceeding.
I'm the judge in the Trump proceeding.
And I don't really believe he lied in this proceeding.
He wasn't asked about that specific interrogatory here.
He's claiming the affair didn't start until 2022.
I have to decide whether that's a lie.
And I don't know if I believe this, Rob and Yerti.
Fanny and Nathan were both very strong that it didn't start till 2022.
The trips didn't start till 2022.
So I'm going with that.
And if I don't have more, I'm not DQing the DA in her office from a huge prosecution.
I think that there is zero chance that this judge will not DQ Fannie Willis and Nathan Wade in this case.
I think that is absolutely going to happen.
I think the only open question is whether he dismisses this case entirely without prejudice so the attorney general can bring in a new prosecutor to start this case,
to decide whether to refile these charges, because this case, as we've talked about, has been tainted since before its inception with this illegal financial stake that Fannie Willis had in this criminal prosecution before they filed the criminal indictment.
And that is the key.
Here's just two other moments I want to get to before, because we are going to move on to a couple of other matters in the time we have.
This has made the rounds on X and I can see why.
He was asked, Nathan Wade was asked if he'd ever been to a cabin with Fannie Willis.
Now, you guys just think about it, and the audience should think about it with respect to their own partners, spouses, whatever.
If somebody asks you, if you've ever been to a cabin, you know the answer.
Yes.
My answer is yes.
Doug and I have been to a cabin many times.
It's not that hard.
It's not a trick question.
But watch this in SOT7.
I'm asking if you remember paying for a cabin six months ago in Tennessee.
No.
Do you remember booking a cabin?
I booked lots of cabins.
Did you go to a cabin with Miss Willis ever?
Ever.
Ever.
No.
You've never gone to a cabin with this.
No.
I don't know what's happening there, but some of the memes on X are amazing.
They do like a little thought bubble of him picturing Fonnie Willis and various outfits.
Inappropriate, but I have to say funny.
What's up with that?
I don't even know what to make of that.
Dave, thoughts on that one?
I was wondering the same thing when he had that long pause.
Like, what is he thinking about?
I mean, unless he goes to cabins every other day with lots of different people and he had to think about it.
This is something you generally remember.
I think in his mind, he's probably trying to say, is this thing a cabin?
This is more of like a home.
I don't know.
He's trying to like split those hairs, but it's not a good look.
By the way, Megan, since we're on the subject, before we move on to the subject, can I give my prediction?
Because it's always dangerous.
Ridiculous Prostate Cancer Allegations 00:08:24
Please.
Thank you.
It's always dangerous to give predictions when there's this thing called videotape out there, but I'm going to do so because Mike brings this up.
I actually think based on what you just said previously, that is, I think, what's going to happen.
I think in the end, the judge is going to dress both of them down.
He's going to say, what were you thinking?
But I don't have enough proof that you lied.
And therefore, I'm not going to disqualify you.
It's, I, I really think that's the clearly wrong decision.
I have to say, I think they're toast and they should be toast.
And, but we'll see.
I mean, I actually looked up.
I didn't know anything about this judge.
He was appointed.
We've talked about that because there was a vacancy and now he's, he's got to run, I think, for reelection.
But he's, he's right leaning.
He was in the Federalist Society.
So this is, you know, not a left-winger.
So I think, and I have to say, I was very impressed at how he bent over backwards to be fair to Willis and Wade yesterday.
That's good because they're in some trouble here.
So you should bend over backwards to be fair to them.
I would say gave her more latitude than he should have, but okay.
So, my general impression in watching that yesterday is: I will trust this judge to make the right decision.
And until he gives me reason to distrust him, I'm assuming he's proceeding in good faith.
And, you know, we'll see what he says.
But I have obviously my own feelings on what the outcome should be.
Here's just a couple other things I can't miss.
This was what, this is sort of the biggest moment yesterday where she got angry.
You know, she came, as I said, loaded for bear.
She's picking up the documents.
It's a lie.
It's a lie.
Here's a bit in SOT 14.
When did your romantic relationship with Mr. Wade end?
Why did it end?
Me and Mr. Wade, we are good friends.
My respect for him has grown over these seven weeks of attacks.
We are very good friends.
I think, but for these attacks, it would have been a friendship that as life goes, you would have stopped having.
I think that you have cemented that we'll be friends to the day we die.
I can handle this.
Say that.
Let's have it.
You asked about a personal relationship.
She asked when the romantic relationship ended.
That's the question.
It's sometime in, I'd say, late summer of 2023.
So I don't believe me and this is what you're really asking about.
This is the salaciousness of all of this, right?
No, I'm just asking about your romantic relationship.
When you stop dating, I think that me and Mr. Wade, so he's a man.
He probably would say June or July.
I would say we had a tough conversation in office.
Mr. Wade visits you at the place you laid your head.
When?
Has he ever visited you at the place you laid your head?
So let's be clear because you've lied in this.
Let me tell you which one you lied in right here.
I think you lied right here.
No, no, no, no.
This is the truth, Judge.
It is a lie.
It is a lie.
Mike, what was your take on that one?
She, I mean, the problem is, is anytime she gets caught in a lie, she lashes out.
She says other people are lying.
She brings up the Black Panther.
She brings up that she's a strong woman.
Those are obvious.
She's obviously deflecting and tried to distract from the fact that she has lied to the court.
Nathan Wade has lied to the court and they've lied to the court repeatedly.
Here was another moment where she kind of did that same thing.
I thought, Dave, I thought it was an inappropriate response about how she's not going to embarrass or emasculate a black man.
It's like she kept raising the black man, black, black, black.
It's like this has nothing to do with race.
Just stop it.
Like, well, okay, fine.
Here she is in SOT 16.
Last area, briefly.
Yes, sir.
You had contact with Mr. Wade in the year 2020, correct?
Ooh, I had some contact with Mr. Wade.
Would you explain when you say some contact?
Please tell us talking about 2020.
I had some contact with Mr. Wade in 2020.
One of the reasons your allegations are so preposterous are Miss Merchants that you have joined is.
Ma'am, I didn't ask you about the allegations.
I asked you about your contact.
That's all I ask you.
Okay, I appreciate that you want to say something, but I'm interested in: did you have contacts with Mr. Wade in 2020?
And your answer so far has been yes, correct?
Very limited contact because Mr. Wade had a form of cancer that makes your allegations somewhat ridiculous.
I do appreciate the characters.
I'm not going to emasculate a black man, but I'm just telling you.
I'm sorry, what?
I'm not going to emasculate a black man.
Did you understand that?
Well, I don't think you're going to be able to do it.
Mr. Seda, next question.
I'm sorry, but that just played so poor.
It's ridiculous.
No one is asking you.
You brought it up.
She's clearly suggesting he had some sort of prostate cancer, something like that.
That's my assumption.
She's the one who brought it up.
And by the way, Dave, no one's saying you were 100% having sex in 2020 while he was struggling with cancer.
It's the question is, did you have a romantic relationship going at that time?
So once again, it's an attempt to obfuscate, mislead, attack the question, even the one that hasn't been asked, all of which are signs of deception.
Perhaps when I looked online to my Democratic friends, they were saying this looks like a high-tech lynching.
And I yeah.
So, you know, I got to say, when you live that experience and you say, hey, this is the first black prosecutor in that area, black woman prosecutor.
And all of a sudden now she is being accused of being a Jezebel and she's being put on the stand.
Now, look, I realize a lot of this is self-inflicted wounds, but we don't live the life experience that Fondi Willis has lived.
And so she was pissed off.
And I'm not going to second guess her outrage, but I understand how those of us from the outside looking at this, like what, like that lawyer said, like, why are you saying I'm masculating a black man when we didn't even bring up race?
But, you know, there are racial overtones in all this.
And she there are no racial overtones in any of this.
It's absurd, Mike, that she kept interjecting race into the matter.
He's asking about whether they were together romantically, whether the relationship began prior to 2022.
The fact, let's say he was going through cancer treatments for something related to his manhood.
That doesn't mean that there wasn't an affair.
Married couples all the time have to deal with this and they don't end their relationship and say, oh, it was over for those eight months he was in chemo.
It's ridiculous.
It's a dodge.
She's trying to paint herself as the victim in gender sympathy.
This is what liars do.
I'm sorry, but I've been with Phil long enough, read his book, Spy the Lie, to understand exactly what she was doing there.
And stupid morons online may have fallen for it and said, you go, girl, it's a lynching.
But those of us who actually are truth seekers could see what she was doing.
The question is whether the judge will.
Do you have any of the same feelings I have, Mike, about this judge?
Yeah, yes.
And I think the American people, after four years of BLMs, nonsense, and racial division, I think that if you look at what real Americans think in the real world, I think they're really tired of this racial division, this racial nonsense, playing the victim because you're a black woman.
She is the Fulton County DA because she's a black woman.
She ran on the fact that she's a black woman.
She ran on the fact that she's a black Panther Cup.
So people are not going to let her use the fact that she's a black woman as an excuse for the fact that she took illegal kickbacks from her unqualified boyfriend and she had a financial interest in this litigation, the biggest criminal case imaginable, a RICO case against a former and likely future president of the United States.
Supreme Court Appeal Absurdity 00:15:14
All right, just an update.
Terrence Bradley did take the stand after being threatened by the judge.
Ashley Merchants trying to establish when he knew that they met and began their romantic relationship.
Objections are continuing on claims of attorney-client privilege.
She's asking based on your personal knowledge, not AC privilege.
He said he has no personal knowledge of when it happened.
So that's how that's going so far.
All right, we've got to get to a couple of other big things in the news today.
I have more Trump, but I just want to switch because the second biggest item is what's happening in the Hunter Biden and Joe Biden corruption cases and allegations, cases in Hunter's case and allegations against Joe.
Big news today is special counsel David Weiss is charging someone.
It's not Hunter Biden with additional charges or Joe Biden.
It's the FBI or ex-FBI informant who said, you remember this FBI document that the FBI didn't want to release to Congress?
And then Congress was going to hold Christopher Wray in contempt unless he gave it to them.
And he gave it to them.
And in it, you had people like Nancy Mace, who was back then a moderate Republican.
Now she's gone kind of wacky.
But she came out and she was like, I think the president has taken a bribe.
And I remember a lot of people were like, wait a minute, if Nancy Mace is saying it, we have to pay attention.
Well, not so much because it turns out the ex-FBI informant's now been named and charged as a liar.
His name is Alexander Smirnoff, 43, longtime FBI informant.
Did not say whether he's a U.S. citizen or from what country he is, only that he's a, quote, globe trotting businessman who speaks Russian and became an FBI informant in 2010.
He was arrested two days ago in Vegas on Wednesday, two charges of making false statements and obstructing the government's long-running investigation into Hunter Biden.
They're saying he fabricated the lie that Biden, President Biden, and Hunter each sought $5 million in bribes to protect Burisma, that Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter sat, from an investigation by the Ukrainian prosecutor general at the time.
They say in 2015 or 2016, Hunter promised to protect the company through his dad from all kinds of problems and that this guy, Smirnov, falsely claimed to his bureau.
That's that was Smirnoff's false claim to his bureau handler in 2020.
The claim was easily disproved, prosecutors said.
Smirnoff was only in contact with Burisma executives in 2017 after Biden left office, President Biden, when he had no ability to influence U.S. policy.
So as I read this, Dave, this is not an exoneration of Hunter or even Joe Biden on sort of the overarching claims of corrupt and pay to play and using the Biden name, but that the most salacious piece that we've seen over the past year, which was they may have taken bribes while he was the sitting vice president to change policy in Ukraine, $5 million for the father and $5 million for the son, appears to have been completely made up by this guy who's now being charged.
Right.
Megan, thank you for bringing this up.
I'm so glad to be done with that last subject where you had me on my heels the whole time.
Now it's Mike's turn.
Yeah, right.
This is better terrain for me because first off, the guy's last name is Smirnov.
So there's jokes in there somewhere.
What a country, right?
When you can come and you can, you can convince James Comer that you're for real.
And then it turns out those folks have egg on their face because this guy was a fraud.
And kudos to Weiss.
I know that Mike doesn't love David Weiss, but hey, this guy lied and he cost a lot of people a lot of time, money, energy.
And this guy should be held accountable.
Now, as far as where it goes next, it doesn't exonerate anyone, but it does expose the narrative that's been on a lot of right-wing TV that this whole thing, this accusation of this whistleblower was nonsense.
And it's interesting, Megan, that I haven't seen many other pundits talk about it who have been perpetuating this stuff.
So kudos to you for bringing this up.
It's important that we realize that this guy was a fraud.
Thank you.
To me, Mike, this is the difference between, you know, we're going to see.
We're going to see in the days now that this is broken who's honest and who's not.
Because what happened on MSNBC and other places during Russia Gate was they spewed these nonsense conspiracy theories night after night.
And then when it became very clear it was all made up post-Mueller and all that, no one ever corrected anything, which does, it does show you that it was ideological, that they don't, they weren't, you know, misled in good faith to reach the wrong conclusion.
Truth tellers will say, oh, I have new information.
Let me share that with you in the media.
And I will be watching to see who doesn't, you know, who tries to downplay this.
It's not that it gets rid of the whole allegation as we just discussed, but there shouldn't be any more talk about the alleged $5 million bribes to Joe and Hunter because David Weiss at least is saying it was completely made up.
And this guy is actually going to be prosecuted for felony lying over it.
But what's your take?
Well, the reason we had those allegations out there is because there was a cover-up.
There was no effort by the FBI and the Justice Department to investigate these allegations that were made by someone who was paid by the U.S. government as a confidential human informant.
So that's the issue.
Now that they've investigated this and they've determined this guy's lying, then they should prosecute.
If there's evidence he's lying, they should prosecute him.
But the problem was the cover-up, right?
And so why did they wait for years to investigate his allegations?
And why aren't they charging the people who lied during the Russian collusion hooks?
Why are they selectively prosecuting liars when those liars hurt Biden, but they're not prosecuting the liars when those liars hurt it, when those liars hurt Trump?
Good, good, good point.
Just to add a little bit of color here, the allegation is he did it.
He lied because of politics during the 2020 campaign.
He sent the FBI, his FBI handler, quote, a series of messages expressing bias against Biden, including texts replete with typos and misspellings, boasting that he had information that would put Biden in jail.
Representative Comer has issued a statement saying it's the FBI's fault.
My sources there have privately told the committee that their source was credible and trusted and had worked with the FBI for over a decade and had been paid six figures.
They actually released that out to the public too.
That's what that's what Comer's people told us.
Well, we'll continue to follow it.
I should say in defense of Smirnoff, allegations are not conclusive.
He's going to get his day in court to deny all of this.
Okay, so that's Biden.
And then big news to come a couple of the other Trump cases.
Number one, Judge Engeron in the civil verdict case, you know, the civil corporate fraud case against Trump is going to release his verdict today of the numbers, really, what Trump is going to be forced to pay and what penalties his company, his company is going to be forced to endure.
And number two, Judge Juan Merchant, who's overseeing the hush money Stormy Daniels case, has refused to throw out the charges against him.
And trial is set to begin in that, the very first of the four cases to go to trial against Trump, criminal cases, March 25th, 10 days after the Ides of March.
Dave, what do you think of the March 25th date and the fact that it looks like we're a go for the hush money case soon?
Beware the Ides of March, Megan.
That's a little Julius Caesar.
Well done.
Look at you.
Love it.
I knew high school English would come in handy one day.
So I think that case is the fourth out of four as far as the strength of the cases for prosecutors.
It doesn't necessarily mean it's a weak case, though.
But here's the thing.
Alvin Bragg, my counterpart up there, is framing that as election interference.
That Donald Trump helped change the course of history by suppressing this information illegally through campaign finance violations.
And this stuff should have come out and it would have changed the election.
The challenge for prosecutors is to be able to bootstrap a federal law, federal campaign finance violations on a state law of falsifying your business records.
That's how you make it into a felony.
That's going to be the challenge.
It's uncharted territory.
One other thing I'd like to add, Megan, to respond to Mike's last point, people did get prosecuted for allegedly lying to the FBI about the Russia investigation.
And that was the subject of the Durham report.
He prosecuted two people.
He lost badly on both, both acquittals.
Oh, that's that.
Fair point.
Okay, so Mike, this is happening.
It's going to be a big number.
Do you have any doubt Judge Engeron in this civil fraud case against Trump is going, I mean, it could be over 300 million.
This is a bet your business litigation for Trump.
He didn't ask for it.
He got it.
Letitia James campaigned on getting Trump, and it appears today she will.
I was told by people close to Trump, this is the case he cares most about.
I mean, it's his business.
There's no question that this Judge Arthur Ingeron, this Democrat operative, is going to drop the hammer on Trump.
And I think that this judge is going to give the maximum fine of over $300 million.
But I think he's going to tell Trump, the Trump organization, that it has to dissolve in New York.
And this will go on appeal.
I think Trump's going to win on appeal because this is obviously an absurd case.
How do you have fraud when you have a businessman paying back sophisticated Wall Street banks on time as agreed in full with interest?
Can you say, oh, sure, the New York law, you don't, there's not a requirements that you can show that there's an actual victim under New York law.
Well, then how do you have standing under Article 3 of the Constitution to bring a fraud claim if there's not a victim, right?
And banks who are told, do your own investigation.
Here's my representation about what my properties are worth, but you should kick the tires yourself.
And it's not like Joe Schmoe, you know, civilians.
These are huge corporate banks.
Like their citibank is allowed to make its own investigation, not rely entirely on the representations of Trump.
This is what is at stake here.
But that Judge Engeron is going to be smiling even bigger than in the video we just showed because he's made clear he wants to stick it to Trump and today he gets to do it.
You're right that that too will be appealed.
There was another development in the Mar-a-Lago case by you, Dave, where the more Trump-friendly judge who's overseeing that, you know, that the documents that he didn't turn over, it seems that she has refused to delay a bunch of motion practice, which the Trump team wanted.
She's holding them to some tight deadlines.
And that has many people wondering whether that case now has a realistic chance of getting tried.
It's on the schedule for May.
Maybe not May, but maybe before November, which I did not think was possible.
What do you make of those recent rulings by her?
I don't think it's possible this case gets tried before the election, Megan.
I think this was just one of many delays that Trump wanted.
And she didn't give everything that he wanted.
And it doesn't mean this case is going to go anytime soon.
There are complex issues of SEPA, that federal law that governs classified documents.
And then there's this whole dispute over whether or not Jack Smith has to produce information about witnesses and documents and evidence that could be harmful to national security and the witnesses themselves.
So that could be appealed to the 11th Circuit.
So in the end, I think, and I think you and I agree on this, is that the strongest case against Trump, the Mar-a-Lago documents case, is now, I think, still the least likely to be tried before the election.
So what this means, though, is that if the, okay, so the civil one's wrapping, E.G. Carol's done.
The corporate civil one that's going to result in probably $300 million is done.
But for the appeals, of course.
The Mar-a-Lago one is probably not going to make it prior to November.
The New York case on Stormy Daniels' hush money payments not properly documented looks like it's going to go off starting March 25th.
And they say it's going to be maybe six weeks at most.
I mean, it shouldn't be six weeks even, but anyway, okay, it's going to be, let's say.
So that'll be wrapped up.
So that leaves us with Georgia and D.C. January 6th federal prosecution.
Georgia, as we are watching, looks like it could be in for some serious delays if anything happens to Wade or Willis.
If the judge says they're fine, like shame on you, but you're fine, that one could restart up again and with vigor, I think it's fair to say, after what just happened in court.
They're not going to take the pedal off the metal.
And all of this, Mike, could be clearing the way for the January 6th federal trial to potentially move forward.
There's motion practice up at the Supreme Court on that right now.
We don't know whether the Supreme Court's going to take the case about whether Trump has immunity or not.
So what do you think is going to happen?
Could that case actually now have a clearer runway for trial before November?
I don't think there's any chance that that's going to go to trial before the election because the Supreme Court, I think, is going to allow President Trump to seek en banc review with the DC Circuit on presidential immunity.
That's going to take several months.
And then the Supreme Court, I think, will accept CERT or take the presidential immunity case.
Remember back in December, Jack Smith said it was so important that the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court alone decide this presidential immunity case that the Supreme Court should grant the extraordinary request of skipping the DC circuit and just decide this case right away.
The Supreme Court said, no, we're going to go through the normal appellate process.
But how can Jack Smith and the Biden Justice Department now claim that the Supreme Court should not hear this case after they asked for the Supreme Court to hear this case through an extraordinary process back in December?
So the Supreme Court, I think, will stay these proceedings, let the D.C. Circuit hear this on bank, and then it will go to the Supreme Court through a cert petition.
The Supreme Court's not going to be able to hear this case, let alone decide this case before the election.
And Dave, we know, does not think the U.S. Supreme Court will accept cert, and that would keep things going quickly down in the trial court.
All right, last question.
Who would you least want to be today after we've seen a day and a half of testimony here?
Fanny Willis, Nathan Wade, or Robin Yurty?
Dave, who would you least want to be?
Nathan Wade.
I mean, he's got his ex-wife who's going to be really upset with everything she heard, the lawyer for the ex-wife, and if he had other girlfriends too.
And he didn't come across well at all.
Fonnie Willis with her fire and brimstone, I thought may have rehabilitated her and him and the case.
And so I think the loser of the week would be Nathan Wade.
I think Fonnie Willis could actually survive this.
Fonnie Survives Legal Jeopardy 00:02:03
I want to point out one thing I forgot to say.
Joselyn, Nathan's ex-wife, through her lawyer, is denying that she ever had an affair, which we heard him say.
She says she had some text messages with an old flame or friend that she admits were not great, but that it never evolved into a physical relationship and that she's being unfairly bespirched by him in this national appearance.
Okay, Mike, who would you least want to be now?
Nathan Wade, Fonnie Willis, or the first witness, Robin Yurty?
I agree with Dave that Nathan Wade is facing the most legal jeopardy on the most fronts.
Although I don't think Fannie Willis or Fonnie Willis or however the hell you say her name, I don't think.
I don't think she's coming out of this looking good at all.
I think she's very damaged through this process and she's going to get disqualified.
The case may get kicked.
She might get disbarred and she might get prosecuted.
We understand that this judge will wrap up the hearing, we think, today, but will not rule today.
So we're going to have to wait to see where this goes.
But it should probably be pretty quick.
And we'll bring you all the developments that happen between now and when we return on Tuesday.
Monday's a holiday because the President's Day, so it shouldn't be much in court.
You guys are the best.
You took time out of your busy days to pinch hit.
And now I'm going back to the pool.
And I thank you both so much for being here.
Thank you.
Thank you, Megan.
Enjoy it.
Oh, thank you.
Gosh.
And thanks to all of you for tuning in.
We didn't do our Sirius XM live show today because we couldn't make that technology happen.
And we don't have our fancy studio.
I'm just sitting here, you know, in like a little booth.
And there's a studio right on campus.
It's beautiful.
But I really wanted to get with you guys and talk about everything we had seen yesterday before it was all stale and picked over by everybody.
So thanks for joining us.
Have a lovely holiday weekend.
And we'll do it all over again on Tuesday.
Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show.
No BS, no agenda, and no
Export Selection