'I'm going to have to caution you': Judge warns Fani Willis in heated hearing

'I'm going to have to caution you': Judge warns Fani Willis in heated hearing
YouTube/screen grab

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee cautioned District Attorney Fani Willis while she testified at a disqualification hearing on Thursday.

Ashleigh Merchant, an attorney for Donald Trump's co-defendant Mike Roman, put Willis on the stand to question her about a romantic relationship with Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade.

At one point, Willis became frustrated by Merchant's question about whether Wade visited her home in 2020.

"He has never been to my home in South Fulton," she said. "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."

"In 2020, did Mr. Wade ever visit you at a place that you resided?" Merchant asked repeatedly.

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"Okay. I don't understand," an exasperated Willis said to the judge. "In 2020, I lived in South Fulton. That's the only place I lived, in South Fulton."

"That's before I had to abandon my home, Judge," she added. "So if you don't come someplace, you can't live there."

McAfee warned the district attorney that her answer was non-responsive.

"Ms. Willis, that's, I'm going to have to caution you, that's going to be my first time I have to caution you," McAfee said.

"I'm going to answer the questions as asked," Willis explained.

"And if this happens again and again, I'm going to have no choice but to strike your testimony," the judge warned.

McAfee later ordered a "pause" in the trial to caution Willis again.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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CNN anchor Abby Phillip clashed with her GOP colleagues on Wednesday over the decision to suspend "Jimmy Kimmel Live" on network television.

Phillip discussed the move with former Republican Governor of Wisconsin Scott Walker and GOP strategist Scott Jennings. It occurred just hours after Nexstar Media Group, which owns several local ABC affiliates, announced that it is suspending Kimmel's show "indefinitely" because of comments the comedian made about conservative activist Charlie Kirk's slaying.

Phillip questioned the timeline of Kimmel's suspension and the involvement of FCC chairman Brendan Carr in the deal. On Tuesday, Carr gave a threatening interview with MAGA podcaster Benny Johnson, where he claimed that the FCC would be taking active measures to ensure broadcast companies abide by the public interest standard.

Within 24 hours, Kimmel was pulled off the air, Phillip noted.

"Nexstar has a very clear financial interest in not getting on the wrong side of that guy," Phillip said to Walker, talking about Carr. "You don't see the problem with that?"

Both Walker and Jennings argued that Nexstar was making a "business decision" by taking Kimmel off the air.

"Do you believe in free speech or not?" Phillip asked pointedly.

"I do, but you can't expect us to sit with our hands tied behind our backs," Walker said.

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Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) lashed out at her GOP colleagues on Wednesday night after a resolution she filed to censure Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and strip Omar of her committee assignments failed to pass.

Mace filed the resolution a few days after Omar made comments about conservative activist Charlie Kirk's death in an interview with Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo News. In the interview, Omar called Kirk's death "tragic" and discussed reasons why she disagreed with some of Kirk's ideas.

Mace and several other MAGA figures called for Omar to be removed from Congress and deported to her home country of Somalia after the interview was released.

"Tonight, 210 Democrats and 4 Republicans sold out and chose to protect Ilhan Omar, a woman who mocked the cold-blooded assassination of an innocent American husband and father, who has openly supported ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood, and who has repeatedly incited political violence," Mace posted on her official X account.

"They didn’t stand with Charlie Kirk," she continued. "They didn’t stand with the millions of Americans mourning his death. They stood with the one who mocked his legacy. They showed us exactly who they are, and we won’t forget."

The Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial board issued a stark warning to President Donald Trump on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve voted to lower interest rates by 0.25%.

The vote happened after Trump applied months of public pressure on the central bank to lower interest rates. The president has moved to install multiple new governors who would vote to reduce rates, with the newest Trump-aligned governor, Stephen Miran, joining the board this week.

"President Trump wants lower interest rates, and on Wednesday, he got his wish as the Federal Open Market Committee cut the overnight rate by a quarter point," the editors argued in a new op-ed. "The FOMC also delivered an implicit warning about what this might mean for the economy. Mr. Trump now owns that, too."

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said on Wednesday that there are still some risks the U.S. economy needs to navigate. For instance, inflation and unemployment have trickled upwards. Powell said those factors have the central bank torn between two mandates: stabilizing prices and maximizing employment.

The Journal's editorial board also wished Trump "good luck" as his administration addresses these economic conditions.

"It may be that everything works out fine: inflation drifts downward after a brief price bump from tariffs, the economy booms despite tariffs and a looming labor shortage, the housing market enters a new golden age, and financial markets gallop happily off into the artificial-intelligence sunset," the editors wrote.

"But if Mr. Trump is wrong, voters will notice sustained inflation and the lack of gains in real wages. Having staked so much on his political assault on the Fed, Mr. Trump owns the outcome now for good or ill," they added.

Read the entire op-ed here.

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