The former law partner and divorce lawyer for Georgia special prosecutor Nathan Wade said in court on Tuesday that he was only “speculating” when he told a defense attorney last month that Wade’s romantic relationship with Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis started well before they have acknowledged in court filings and in testimony.
Lawyers for former president Donald Trump and other co-defendants in Georgia’s election-fraud case suggested that Terence Bradley was being evasive, giving inconsistent testimony, and that he had more knowledge about Willis’s and Wade’s relationship than he was acknowledging in court. Trump’s lawyer, Steve Sadow, asked Bradley if it was true that he had information about the relationship, but “you don’t want to admit it in court.”
But despite hours of questioning, it doesn’t appear that Bradley’s testimony shed any new light about when Willis and Wade started their romance or if they were untruthful in court.
Defense lawyers in the case are trying to have Willis and Wade disqualified from the case, arguing that their relationship created a conflict of interest and that they also lied to the court about when it started. In court filings and testimony, they both said that the romance began after Willis hired Wade to lead the election-fraud case in November 2021.
Defense lawyers had previously suggested that Bradley, who is Wade’s one-time law partner and divorce lawyer, would be a “star witness” because he could testify that the relationship started years earlier. According to his testimony, Bradley communicated with defense lawyer Ashleigh Merchant in January over the phone and in texts that the relationship “absolutely” started before Willis hired Wade, but that they would “deny it.”
But on the stand, Bradley repeatedly said that was only “speculation on my part.”
“I’ve said over and over again that I didn’t have any personal information where I could personally say when it started,” he said. “I’ve said that time and time again.”
Bradley said he couldn’t provide a date, or even a year, when Willis and Wade began a romantic relationship, or if it began before Willis hired Wade. “I recall [Wade] stating that at some point they were dating,” he said. “I can’t tell you what date that was.”
During their questioning of Bradley, the defense lawyers received regular pushback from Fulton County Superior Court judge Scott McAfee and prosecutors over the order of their queries, and how they were establishing the knowledge Bradley had, and how and when he got it. Prosecutors said his knowledge was based on “gossip and innuendo” and privileged information. Bradley acknowledged that it was “definitely” true that he did not want to be a witness in the hearing.
Bradley previously made two brief appearances on the witness stand during a mid-February hearing over the motion to have Willis and Wade disqualified from leading the election-fraud case. In that hearing, defense lawyers were stymied by Bradley’s repeated assertion that his knowledge about the Willis and Wade romance was privileged.
Bradley was ordered to return to the witness stand by McAfee, after the two met privately and the judge determined that some knowledge Bradley had about the timing of Willis’s and Wade’s relationship was not protected by attorney-client privilege.
Wade argued against the meeting between McAfee and Bradley happening at all, contending in a 12-page motion that the meeting itself could violate attorney-client privilege. “The Court should not conduct the examination under any circumstance,” the motion said.
Willis and Wade both testified in the mid-February hearing that although they met in 2019, they didn’t start a romantic relationship until early 2022, after Wade was hired, and that it ended last summer.
Robin Bryant-Yeartie, a former friend and colleague of Willis’s, testified that the romance, including “hugging, kissing,” began soon after Willis and Wade met at a conference in 2019.
On Friday, Trump’s lawyers also made a court filing involving an analysis of Wade’s cellphone data that indicated that he and Willis had thousands of phone calls and text exchanges in 2021, and that Wade may have spent the night at or near Willis’s condo months before they say their romantic relationship began.
Legal experts who spoke to National Review were divided on the question of whether Willis’s conduct, if proven, would warrant disqualification from the case, but agreed that if she and Wade are proven to have lied to judge McAfee about the timeline of their relationship, they would almost certainly be removed from the case.
If Willis “lied to the court, even indirectly, by submitting an affidavit that she knew to be false, I don’t see how she continues in this case,” said Emory University Law professor John Acevedo.
Cully Stimson, a former prosecutor and Heritage Foundation legal expert, agreed that it would be very problematic if Wade lied in his affidavit. “That calls into question his ability to be truthful in an official proceeding,” he said.