Lawyers offer new witnesses in an effort to disqualify Trump accusers in Georgia
Defense attorneys in the Georgia election interference case against former President Donald J. Trump say they want to put someone on the stand whose testimony could support it their claim that Terrence Bradley, a witness in their effort to disqualify the prosecutors who led the case, gave misleading testimony.
The new information comes from Cindi Lee Yeager, a deputy district attorney in neighboring Cobb County, Georgia, with whom defense attorneys said they spoke on Friday about conversations she has had with Mr. Bradley.
At issue is a key issue in the disqualification efforts: the timing of the romantic relationship that developed between Fani T. Willis, who as a Fulton County prosecutor is leading the prosecution of Mr. Trump, and Nathan Wade, the defense attorney from the Atlanta area. she hired to manage the business.
Ms Willis and Mr Wade have said a romance developed between them after she hired him in November 2021. But defense attorneys have tried to prove the romantic relationship began earlier.
If they are correct that Ms. Willis hired a boyfriend for a lucrative, high-profile job, it could strengthen their argument that she engaged in “self-dealing” when she took a number of vacations with Mr. Wade, thus creating a relationship. conflict of interest that should result in her removal from the case.
Defense lawyers believed that Mr. Bradley, a former partner of Mr. Wade who also served for a time as Mr. Wade’s divorce lawyer, could provide some clarity about when the romance began. But that didn’t happen. In a text message exchange in January, he told one of the lawyers on the case that he “absolutely” thought the romance began before Ms. Willis hired Mr. Wade.
But when he was called to the witness box last week, Mr Bradley said he was ‘speculating’.
In a filing on Monday, lawyers for David J. Shafer, a co-defendant in the case, said they spoke with Ms. Yeager, who said Mr. Bradley told her the relationship with prosecutors began before Mr. Wade left . to work for Mrs. Willis.
The filing stated that according to Ms. Yeager, Mr. Bradley told her that “Mr. Wade had definitively begun a romantic relationship with Ms. Willis around the time Ms. Willis was running for district attorney in 2019 through 2020.
According to the filing, Ms. Yeager said she also heard Ms. Willis call Mr. Bradley last September, following a news article that reported how much her office paid Mr. Wade and his legal partners. (Mr. Bradley’s work for the firm was not related to the Trump case.)
“They’re coming after us,” Ms. Willis told Mr. Bradley during the conversation, according to Ms. Yeager’s account detailed in the defense filing. “You don’t have to talk to them about us.”
The context of Ms Willis’ alleged phone call to Mr Bradley is not clear; In any event, it would have occurred before the disqualification began in January and before it was known that Mr. Bradley would be subpoenaed to testify.
Last month, Mr. Bradley was on the stand testified that he “did not know Ms Willis personally”. “My interaction with Ms. Willis was never a matter of picking up the phone to talk to her,” he said.
It is also unclear what impact Ms. Yeager’s statement might have on a judge’s decision whether to disqualify the plaintiffs. The judge, Scott McAfee of the Fulton County Superior Court, has already completed his testimony on the disqualification question; On Friday he said he would rule on the matter within two weeks.
In their filing on Monday, Mr. Shafer’s lawyers asked the judge to allow them to put Ms. Yeager on the stand “in the event that the court reopens the hearing to receive additional evidence.” They noted that Mr. Trump and Ms. Willis’ office also asked the judge to allow additional testimony.
At a hearing on Friday, Judge McAfee heard final legal arguments from both sides, but said he could hold another hearing if evidence emerged that required it.
A lawyer for Mr. Bradley did not return a call seeking comment. Ms. Yeager, who previously ran for local office as a Republican — but says she currently considers herself a Democrat — declined to comment on the filing Monday. A spokesperson for the public prosecutor The office did not comment Monday, but Ms. Willis and her office have described the disqualification effort as legally baseless and an attempt to generate salacious headlines.
If successful, the effort to oust Ms. Willis would throw the criminal case against Mr. Trump into turmoil, forcing a government agency to find another prosecutor to take on the case. A new prosecutor could move to preserve, amend or drop the case against Mr. Trump, who was indicted in August along with 18 allies on charges of conspiring to overturn the former president’s 2020 election loss in Georgia to make.
Since then, four suspects have pleaded guilty.