A former law professor weighs in on the latest controversy.
Retired Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz said that Fulton County’s district attorney may have lied under oath last week during hours of testimony in court to determine whether she would be disqualified from prosecuting a case in Georgia against former President Donald Trump.
The district attorney, Fani Willis, is prosecuting a case against President Trump and more than a dozen co-defendants, alleging that they were involved in a criminal conspiracy to change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
Ms. Willis was grilled by defense lawyers on Feb. 15 regarding her relationship with special counsel Nathan Wade, including about when their relationship started and whether she paid Mr. Wade back for multiple vacations.
A co-defendant in the Trump case filed a motion last month that accused her of concealing the relationship and of profiting from taxpayer funds after her office paid Mr. Wade.
Defense lawyers contended that the relationship started before Ms. Willis hired Mr. Wade and that she improperly benefited from his earnings, creating a conflict of interest that should disqualify the district attorney from the case. Robin Yeartie, Ms. Willis’s former friend and co-worker, testified on Feb. 15 that she saw the two hugging and kissing before Mr. Wade was hired in November 2021.
Attorneys for the state called two key witnesses of their own on Feb. 16: Ms. Willis’s father, who said he didn’t know about his daughter’s relationship until recently, and former Gov. Roy Barnes, who testified that Ms. Willis asked him to serve as special prosecutor, testimony the attorneys used to back her claim that Mr. Wade wasn’t her first choice for the job.
Mr. Dershowitz said on Fox News that there is a plausible case that Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis committed perjury. He said that Mr. Wade “clearly” committed perjury during his testimony on Feb. 15, during which he “swore under oath, essentially,” that he did not have sexual relations with Ms. Willis but later admitted that he did when his “marriage had broken down.”
