This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a feature highlighting a statement from the news that exemplifies just how extremely normal everything has become.
“He was a disc jockey or something and he had all this paraphernalia that I’d have to move out. There was a thing, you know, with a keyboard—things that played music and so forth.” — John Floyd, father of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, on one of her ex-boyfriends.
There’s a lot going on in the two-day hearing over misconduct allegations against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis—but one witness really stole the show on Friday. Willis’ own father, retired criminal defense lawyer John Floyd, took the stand, and his testimony was filled with endearing, fatherly asides.
Floyd was brought in to corroborate portions of Willis’s testimony from Thursday, including the timeline of her personal relationship with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she hired and has admitted to being in a romantic relationship with during their work on the election interference case against Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants.
Willis maintains that the relationship began after Wade was hired; lawyers for Mike Roman, one of Trump’s co-defendants in the election interference case, have been trying to argue that the relationship began before that, that Wade’s hiring was inappropriate, and that the two misspent government funds. Roman is seeking to have Willis and Wade removed from the case, and Trump has joined the motion. Willis testified her romantic relationship with Wade is now over and repeatedly accused Roman’s attorney of “lying” about her personal life.
In a classic dad move, Floyd shared some slightly embarrassing anecdotes about his daughter’s personal life while on the stand. While explaining that he moved into Willis’ home to live with her in 2019, Floyd also revealed that Willis had a boyfriend who went by the nickname “Deuce” at the time. The man was “a disc jockey or something,” Floyd said, complaining that his ”paraphernalia” was always in his way while Floyd was living in his daughter’s home. And before anyone got the wrong idea, Floyd quickly added, “You know, with a keyboard—things that played music and so forth.”
Floyd also testified that he did not know his daughter was dating Wade until 2023. “I just found out when other folks found out.” He later said Willis has never confided in him about her personal life and that “I haven’t confided in her about mine when I had one, okay.”
And as his testimony continued, Floyd also explained that from a young age, he told his daughter to always have hard currency on hand, specifically to keep “six months of cash, always.” This part of Floyd’s testimony corroborated what Wade and Willis have said—that Willis paid Wade back in cash for travel purchases he made for the two of them while they were dating. However, neither one had any documentation to prove it. This became a point of contention on Thursday, as the defense questioned how such large purchases could be paid for in cash. But, Floyd explained, “maybe—and excuse me your honor, I’m not trying to be racist—but it’s a Black thing.” (The judge in the case, Scott McAfee, later ruled that he would have to weigh the fact that Floyd apparently didn’t sequester himself from the publicly reported details of Thursday’s hearing involving his daughter, as he was supposed to be instructed to do, against his credibility as a witness.)
Floyd also confirmed that Willis eventually was forced to move out of her Georgia home in early 2021—she began her investigation into Trump around the same time—because of the volume of serious threats and harassment she was receiving. He said strangers showed up outside “cursing and yelling” and spray painted the home with the “b-word and n-word.”
Right before Floyd took the witness stand, former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes testified that he turned down Willis’ offer to serve as special prosecutor on her case because of death threats he was already receiving for being “‘too close to the Jews’ quote-unquote.’” That corroborated Willis’ claim that she reached out to multiple attorneys for the special prosecutor job before hiring Wade.
After a couple hours, Floyd was dismissed from the witness stand. While things aren’t looking so good for Willis, her father’s testimony was a little bright spot in the wild and unpredictable two-day hearing.
