The details about Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s (D) relationship with the special prosecutor in charge of the former president’s Georgia 2019 election interference investigation was made more complicated following a second round of testimony by an important witness this week.
The ambiguities surrounding the timeline that surrounded Willis and Nathan Wade’s relationship is particularly problematic, as the two attorneys claiming that they didn’t start meeting until after Willis was hired by Wade to supervise Trump’s case.
But the witnesses in the probe of their relationship have said that they were not.
Terrence Bradley, who was the former law attorney and partner of Wade Bradley, reminisced about very little of his own information in the witness stand on Tuesday, noting a plethora of times that he was unable to recall the details of the things Wade spoke to the former lawyer about Willis.
But his sometimes tense testimony gave a hefty dose of doubt, and further muddy the waters surrounding the relationship, which could result in both prosecutors removed from the trial.
The defense wants to block Willis, Wade and the entire Fulton County district attorney’s office from continuing to pursue the broad racketeering investigation against Trump and a number of his allies.
The core of their argument lies the timing in Willis and Wade’s relationship which defense lawyers say started before Wade’s appointment. The defense asserts that Willis has profited from Wade’s work through trips they took together when they were dating. Wade got hired November 2021.
Both prosecutors maintain that they started dating in the early 2022’sfollowing Wade’s hireand then broke up in the summer of 2023. This was just before the indictment of Trump was pronounced, claiming there isn’t any conflict. But this week’s testimony has cast the timeline of their relationship further into doubt.
Ashleigh Merchant, who is an attorney for the 2020 Trump Campaign the operative Michael Roman, who first openly made public allegations of the relationship provided Bradley in the form of a silver bullet for defense texts that show the former law firm partner of Bradley confirming the timeline of the defense.
The messages placed Bradley in a tense situation as Merchant and others tried to force him to confess to a felony of discussing the conversations with his client Wade. If he was summoned to testify at an earlier trial, Bradley at first mentioned attorney-client privilege, a way to not answer questions. He was then forced to witness stand on Tuesday, after a judge ruled that the privilege did not apply.
With Wade standing just feet away and sometimes shaking his head Bradley was careful to follow the rules of protecting his license to practice law and a former friend -even as defense lawyers tried to personalize the situation. In one instance the attorney was asked if Bradley often made up stories about his acquaintances, suggesting that the lawyer was either lying regarding the relationship’s timeline or was lying about Wade.
In the text messages, Merchant said, Bradley said that the romance between the prosecutors “absolutely” began before Willis appointed Wade. Bradley said he could “see that in the text messages.”
“And do you remember me asking what they would doshould they take me down? You said that they would refuse to admit that or not?'” Merchant pressed on with an argument from the state which the judge ruled against.
“That’s written in the book. Sure,” he replied.
If asked questions regarding the conversation Bradley claimed that his remarks are “speculation.” Trump attorney Steve Sadow pushed back on the assertion, asking “why in the heck” that he would speculate on the subject. After some exchanges, Bradley replied he had “no answer” for why he was speculating.
“What you want the court to believe and you want the rest of us to believe, is that for some unknown reason, upon being asked a direct question about when the relationship started, you decided on your own to simply speculate and put it down in a text message as opposed to putting down what you actually knew,” Sadow stated she claimed that Bradley knows the date Willis and Wade started dating, but didn’t wish to be a witness in court.
Despite Bradley’s protest on the stand as a witness, his messages are in line with the testimony in a previous hearing by a former acquaintance of Willis. Robin Yeartie, who met Willis in the college years she testified earlier in the month Willis and Wade started their relationship in the year 2019 following an unofficial court hearing -which was a few years prior to when the prosecutors stated under the oath. Willis denied Yeartie’s testimony.
But, at the conclusion of Tuesday’s court hearing, Bradley called his own credibility to be in doubt. When questioned by Richard Rice, an attorney representing the defendant Bob Cheeley Bradley stated that he couldn’t recall if he’d ever committed a lie to Merchant Roman’s defense lawyer in their letters.
“I don’t recall ever whether any of it was a lie or not,” the man said.
The Tuesday hearing won’t be the last decision on the issue.
The judge Scott McAfee will hear arguments from the lawyers on Friday afternoon, and then decide. He has previously stated that the allegations made against Willis as well as Wade “could result” in their exclusion if there is evidence of the existence of an “actual conflict of interest or the appearance of one.”
McAfee said he might be looking at additional evidence on Friday should it be necessary, such as the analysis of phone data provided by the defense suggest Wade frequented Willis’s residence dozens of times, often late into the nightbefore that their relationship started.
The office of the district attorney contests the authenticity of the information, however the judge stated that he’ll take it into consideration in the event that he believes he has to do so following the arguments on Friday.