A new witness has been disclosed by the defense team in the ongoing saga of the spiraling Georgia state prosecution of President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants. The politicized lawfare prosecution designed to defeat Trump outside of normal electoral channels is in danger of being derailed by allegations of serious corruption, perjury, and ethical misconduct by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her personally appointed special prosecutor, Nathan Wade.
Court proceedings over the last month have shown that Willis might have compromised her professional duties due to her romantic and financial relationship with Wade.
After hearing testimony for several days and closing arguments last week on motions to dismiss the case and disqualify Willis and Wade, Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee is deliberating on his ruling. A critical factual determination must be made about whether the romantic relationship between Willis and Wade began before Wade’s hiring as a special prosecutor in 2021. Both of them have defiantly denied that allegation under oath in court testimony. They claim they only became romantically involved between 2022 and 2023.
Fani Willis warned Nathan Wade’s lawyer to stay quiet about affair, court filing claims: ‘They are coming after us’ https://t.co/Azcve9qPAb pic.twitter.com/avFFRbbLTr
— New York Post (@nypost) March 4, 2024
Court filings by the defense team on Monday show that Cindi Lee Yeager, a deputy district attorney from Cobb County, Georgia, is prepared to testify that Terrence Bradley, formerly associated with Wade, admitted to her that Willis and Wade’s relationship commenced during Willis’ campaign for District Attorney, directly contradicting their sworn testimonies.
Yeager is expected to testify, if called, that she heard Willis speaking on the phone with Terrence Bradley in a September 2023 call. Bradley testified in the hearing on the motion to disqualify Willis and Wade. He was Wade’s prior law partner and, for a time, represented him in his still-pending divorce case.
“They are coming after us. You don’t need to talk to them about anything about us,” Willis allegedly warned Bradley.
Bradley also texted Ashleigh Merchant, a lawyer for another Trump co-defendant, saying that the pair were “absolutely” dating before Willis hired Wade to manage the Trump prosecution in November 2021. When he was confronted with that evidence on the witness stand last month, he said, “Oh, dang.”
The new court filing alleges that “Yeager is willing to testify that Bradley told her Wade “had definitively begun a romantic relationship with Ms. Willis during the time that Ms. Willis was running for District Attorney in 2019 through 2020.” It says that after she saw Bradley’s testimony on television, Yeager “became concerned as a result of the fact that what Mr. Bradley testified to on the witness stand was directly contrary to what Mr. Bradley had told Ms. Yeager in person.”
Meanwhile, the Georgia Senate Special Committee on Investigations has begun hearings, suggesting the scope of inquiry into Willis’s conduct and her relationship with Wade is expanding. The outcome of these investigations and the judicial ruling on Willis’s role in the Trump case could have far-reaching consequences.
