The ex-law partner for the special prosecutor in the Georgia criminal case against former President Donald Trump acknowledged at a court hearing on Tuesday that he previously said in texts he believed the top prosecutor “absolutely” started dating the Fulton County district attorney before she hired him to lead the high-profile case.
Terrence Bradley, also the ex-divorce attorney and longtime friend of special prosecutor Nathan Wade, was called back to the witness stand to testify at an evidentiary hearing related to a romantic relationship between Wade and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
The high-stakes hearing — which could result in the removal of Willis from the election interference case against Trump and his allies — comes after an attorney for one of the codefendants in the case, Mike Roman, filed a motion alleging that Willis had an “improper” romantic relationship with Wade and financially benefited from his hiring.
Attorneys for Trump, along with several of his codefendants, have also joined in on the motion.
While on the witness stand Tuesday, Bradley testified that he had no personal knowledge of when Willis and Wade’s relationship began and repeatedly said he could not recall any specific dates related to the matter.
But he did acknowledge a text exchange he had with Ashleigh Merchant — a lawyer for Roman, a former Trump campaign staffer and codefendant in the Georgia case — who filed the initial motion on the allegations.
“Do you recall me asking you, ‘Do you think it started before she hired him?’ And you said, ‘absolutely,'” Merchant questioned Bradley, referring to the timing of Willis and Wade’s relationship.
Bradley replied, “I see that in the text messages, yes.”
“Do you also recall me asking you how they would react? If they would attack me? And you said ‘no, they will deny it,'” Merchant continued.
Bradley responded, “That’s written in there, yes.”
When Merchant asked Bradley about a text message she said he sent her saying Wade and Willis’ relationship began before Willis became the Fulton County DA, Bradley said he was only “speculating.”
“No one told me. I was speculating,” Bradley said, adding, “I never witnessed anything.
While under questioning by Trump lawyer Steve Sadow about the text messages between Bradley and Merchant, Sadow asked Bradley: “Why in the heck would you speculate in this text message?”
“I don’t recall why I felt that it started at the time,” Bradley said.
“Why would you speculate when she was asking you a direct question about when the relationship started?” Sadow again asked Bradley, who replied, “I have no answer for that.”
“Except for the fact that you do, in fact, know when it started and you don’t want to testify to that in court. That’s the best explanation,” Sadow snapped back.
Additionally, Bradley confirmed in his testimony on Tuesday that Merchant sent him a draft of her motion before she filed it in January.
Merchant said she sent it to Bradley to check for any inaccuracies and that he corrected her about an error related to a payment.
“When you reviewed the motion, and you specifically pointed out that one thing that you found inaccurate, you didn’t point anything else out that you found inaccurate in that motion, though, correct?” Merchant asked Bradley.
“No, I did not,” Bradley replied.
The motion alleged that Willis and Wade’s relationship began while Wade was married and before Willis appointed Wade in November 2021 to spearhead the probe into Trump and others’ efforts to overturn Trump’s Georgia loss during the 2020 presidential election.
The lawyer alleged that the relationship was a conflict of interest because Willis benefited from Wade’s hiring because he took her on expensive trips and vacations.
Earlier this month, both Willis and Wade took the witness stand in the matter and testified that their romantic relationship began in early 2022, after he began working for her office, and ended in the summer 2023.
They said Willis paid him back, in cash, for any travel he booked, or she picked up other tabs during their trips to make up for it.
Willis vehemently defended herself and Wade and pushed back on testimony by her former friend that she and Wade started dating in 2019.
