Terrence Bradley, a lawyer in Atlanta, was the star witness in the disqualification of Fani Willis, the district attorney leading the election interference case against former President Donald Trump in Georgia. However, his testimony did not resolve a question at the heart of the defense’s attempt to show that Willis had an untenable conflict of interest: whether the romantic relationship between Willis and Nathan Wade, the lawyer she hired to help run the Trump case, began before or after he joined her staff.
Hundreds of text messages obtained by The New York Times show that Bradley, a former law partner and friend of Wade, helped a defense lawyer to expose the relationship between the two prosecutors. The judge will ultimately assess the credibility of Bradley and determine whether the text messages bolster the case for disqualifying the prosecutors. Lawyers for Trump and his co-defendants have argued that the relationship between the prosecutors amounted to “self-dealing,” because Wade, who has made more than $650,000 working for Willis’ office, paid for vacations that the couple took together.
Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, has defended her conduct in the election interference case against former Trump and his allies. She acknowledges that she had a romantic relationship with Wade, but she claims it started after she hired him and did not create a conflict under Georgia law. Both Wade and Willis have told the court that they divided the costs of vacations about evenly between them.
