Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis testified on Thursday that she keeps cash reserves in her residence, and that she used those reserves to repay her former lover, special prosecutor Nathan Wade, for the luxurious vacations he paid for using his business credit card.
An estimate of Willis’ cash savings since 2018, when she admitted to being “broke” as the result of a fierce primary campaign, suggests that Willis could have paid Wade in cash while increasing her reserves through cash back during shopping trips, as she implied.
However, such an arrangement would likely require the district attorney’s vacations with her former lover to be the primary drain on her cash hoard.
Wade, who has been paid more than $650,000 by Fulton County taxpayers, also testified Thursday that Willis paid him back using cash. He claimed he did not know the origin of Willis’ money.
Both were subpoenaed last week to testify in proceedings requesting the removal of Willis that stem from claims she financially benefited from Wade’s appointment through gifts exchanged through their relationship. Defendants in Willis’ election case against former President Donald Trump are seeking to have her removed from the case as a result of the relationship.
Willis, citing her family values, claimed that she has always kept between $500 and $15,000 in cash inside her home over the course of her adult life, prompting one of the defense attorneys to refer to it as her “cash hoard.”
Craig Gillen asks Fani Willis: "So the point is that what you're telling is us you were in financial straits, but really that your testimony today is you had a cash hoard of maybe up to $10,000 in cash where you laid your head at night…" pic.twitter.com/QHnzDYjGP9
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) February 15, 2024
The district attorney later testified that she was “broke” in 2018, which she clarified meant low on savings, but disputed a defense attorney’s claim she had a $4,000 tax lien levied on her home during this time.
However, Willis also testified that the cash she used to repay Wade could have come from earlier private sector work, or from money which she claimed to have withdrawn from her first campaign. She also testified she paid Wade $2,500 on one occasion, indicating a minimum of $2,500 in cash savings before she began her work as district attorney in January 2021.
Fani Willis admits a crime:
"When I took out a large amount of money on my first campaign, I kept some of the cash of that."pic.twitter.com/lliMihDfQi
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) February 15, 2024
Willis, when asked about how she physically retrieved money to add to her cash reserves, suggested the majority of her withdrawals took place at Publix, the employee-owned supermarket company headquartered in Florida, in the form of cash-back requests during regular store runs. Publix appears to have limits on its cash-back of either $50 or $100.
If Willis began December 2018 with meager cash reserves of just $500, then shopped at a Publix store once per week, and on average withdrew $75 in cash from her bank account during each visit, her cash hoard could have increased to more than $12,000 by time she claims her relationship with Wade began in early 2022.
Additionally, Willis testified that she primarily paid for a condo she was subleasing from a former friend and colleague using CashApp, indicating it was more convenient than physical cash, but that she continued to pay Wade in cash because he did not use the mobile banking app. This could indicate repayments to Wade were Willis’ primary cash expense during their relationship, which the pair claims began in early 2022 and ended by August 2023.
Assuming Willis began with $500 in December 2018, the district attorney could have saved up to $14,300 by October of 2022, which is the credit card statement period when Wade made the first of a series of purchases related to a vacation that included Willis.
Wade’s business credit card statements were obtained by the defense as a result of the special prosecutor’s divorce case, and the attorneys later submitted them into the Trump case as evidence of the relationship between Wade and Willis.
If Willis repaid Wade for her expenses during all of the vacations in cash, she would have repaid him approximately $1,336.27 for passage on a Royal Caribbean cruise, $477.21 for an American Airlines plane ticket and $61.72 for later changes made to that ticket, for a combined $1,875.21 in repayments. This would have reduced her potential savings to $12,424.79.
In additional holiday-themed purchases dated to October 2022, Wade paid $3,835.26 to Vacation Express, potentially leaving Willis indebted another $1,917.63 to Wade and her cash savings further reduced to $10,507.16 for the month.
The monthly account statement for October and November shows Wade made additional travel purchases during those months, including $3,172.20 to Norwegian Cruise Line, $370.88 to a Hyatt Regency in Aruba, $640.02 to a short-term rental in Baton Rouge, and $992.28 to Freedom of the Seas in Miami, Florida by the end of November.
Willis defined this as the “Aruba trip” in her testimony, and stressed that she paid Wade $2,500 in cash for her participation in the trip, which purportedly also included the special prosecutor’s mother. This would mean Willis paid for just less than half of the cost of the trip, and would bring her cash savings down to $8,007.16.
Assuming Willis still increased her cash reserves through Publix trips between her busy case load and travel schedule, her approximate cash savings would have been approximately $8,607.16 by the end of November.
Wade would next pay for the couple’s combined travel using his company credit card during the April and May billing cycle, when he spent $817.80 for a Delta Air Line plane ticket in Willis’ name to San Francisco. Wade then made two payments for a total of $840.22 to the Doubletree hotel in Napa Valley, California, meaning Willis would have owed Wade $420.11 if he paid for her room or a shared room.
The special prosecutor also spent $353.53 on Uber trips around this period, as well as $147.16 on flowers, which would have brought Willis’ potential cash reserves back down to $8,918.90.
If Willis and Wade truthfully ended their relationship by August 2023, as they both suggested in their testimony, and Willis continued to increase her cash hoard through regular trips to Publix, the district attorney would have amassed approximately $11,318.90 by January 2024.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Georgia Star News, The Virginia Star, and the Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Image “Fulton County DA Fani Willis” by Fulton County Government.
