Star Witness In Fani Willis Hearing Apparently Backtracks—Says He Was ‘Speculating’ About Relationship Start

 

Prosecutor Nathan Wade’s former law partner Terrence Bradley said he was “speculating” when he previously said Wade’s relationship with Fulton County Attorney General Fani Willis began before she hired him to prosecute former President Donald Trump’s election interference case

KEY FACTS

Bradley—Wade’s former law partner and divorce attorney—took the stand at Willis’ disqualification case after Georgia Judge Scott McAfee ordered him to resume his testimony on topics not covered by attorney-client privilege.

For one hour of his testimony, Bradley denied having knowledge of when Willis and Wade started dating, saying he did not “recall any specific dates.”

Attorneys for Trump and his co-defendants in his Georgia election interference case have argued that Willis started dating Wade before she hired him to prosecute the former president’s racketeering case, though Willis had denied dating him before charges were brought in that case.

In Tuesday’s testimony, Trump attorney Steven Sadow presented Bradley with a screenshot of a text message from Ashleigh Merchant, an attorney for one of Trump’s co-defendants in the RICO case, when Merchant asked Bradley if he thought the relationship began before Willis hired Wade, to which Bradley replied: “absolutely.”

After seeing that screenshot, however, Bradley said he “was speculating,” acknowledging he knew Wade and Willis met at a conference in 2019—throwing a curveball in the escalating scandal over what Trump’s co-defendants claim is a conflict of interest.

KEY BACKGROUND

Trump’s legal team has been relying on phone records to reject Willis’ claim that her relationship did not predate hiring Wade, including AT&T records in an affidavit last week from a private investigator Trump’s team hired. The records linked Wade’s phone to a cell tower near Willis’ condo outside Atlanta, revealing over 2,000 phone calls and nearly 12,000 text messages between Willis and Wade between January and November 2021 (Willis hired Wade in 2022). Michael Roman, one of Trump’s 18 co-defendants in his racketeering case in Fulton County, filed a suit last month claiming Willis engaged in an “improper, clandestine personal relationship with Wade,” arguing that the relationship with the prosecutor she hired constitutes a conflict of interest and that Willis should be removed from the case. Several of Trump’s co-defendants have since joined Roman in pushing for Willis’ disqualification. Roman also argued Wade lacks the necessary qualifications to prosecute the case, stating Wade, a former prosecutor in Cobb County, Georgia, has not “prosecuted a single felony trial” (the New York Times reported that Wade had not previously worked on racketeering cases, but rather focused on low-level criminal cases).

CONTRA

Willis admitted to the relationship with Wade in a court filing and later at the witness stand earlier this month, though she pushed back on the notion that their relationship began before she hired him. Willis also slammed prosecutors in her testimony, arguing Merchant’s “interests are contrary to democracy,” calling it “highly offensive when someone tries to implicate that you slept with somebody the first day you met with them.” Willis has maintained she should not be disqualified from the case, in which Trump and his co-defendants face charges of allegedly attempting to overturn the results of his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden.