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Protection legal professionals within the Georgia election interference case towards former President Donald J. Trump say they wish to put somebody on the stand whose testimony might again up their assertion that Terrence Bradley, a witness of their effort to disqualify the prosecutors operating the case, gave deceptive testimony.
The brand new info comes from Cindi Lee Yeager, a deputy district lawyer in neighboring Cobb County, Ga., whom the protection legal professionals stated they spoke to on Friday about conversations she has had with Mr. Bradley.
At subject is a key matter within the disqualification effort: the timing of the romantic relationship that developed between Fani T. Willis, who because the Fulton County district lawyer is main the prosecution of Mr. Trump, and Nathan Wade, the Atlanta-area lawyer she employed to handle the case.
Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade have stated {that a} romance developed between them after she employed him in November 2021. However the protection legal professionals have tried to show the romantic relationship began earlier.
If they’re appropriate that Ms. Willis employed a boyfriend for a profitable, high-profile job, it would bolster their argument that she engaged in “self-dealing” when she took a lot of holidays with Mr. Wade, and thus created a battle of curiosity that ought to lead to her elimination from the case.
Protection legal professionals thought that Mr. Bradley, a former legislation associate of Mr. Wade who additionally served for a time as Mr. Wade’s divorce lawyer, would possibly provide some readability as to when the romance started. However that didn’t occur. In a textual content alternate in January, he advised one of many protection legal professionals within the case that he “completely” thought the romance started earlier than Ms. Willis employed Mr. Wade.
However when known as to the stand final week, Mr. Bradley stated that he had been “speculating.”
In a submitting on Monday, legal professionals for David J. Shafer, a co-defendant within the case, stated that they’d spoken to Ms. Yeager, who stated that Mr. Bradley had advised her the prosecutors’ relationship started earlier than Mr. Wade went to work for Ms. Willis.
The submitting acknowledged that based on Ms. Yeager, Mr. Bradley advised her that “Mr. Wade had definitively begun a romantic relationship with Ms. Willis through the time that Ms. Willis was operating for district lawyer in 2019 by 2020.”
In line with the submitting, Ms. Yeager stated she additionally overheard Ms. Willis name Mr. Bradley final September, prompted by a information article that talked about how a lot her workplace was paying Mr. Wade and his legislation companions. (Mr. Bradley’s work for the workplace was not associated to the Trump case.)
“They’re coming after us,” Ms. Willis advised Mr. Bradley through the name, based on the account provided by Ms. Yeager that’s described within the protection submitting. “You don’t want to speak to them about something about us.”
The context of Ms. Willis’ alleged name to Mr. Bradley shouldn’t be clear; In any case, it might have taken place earlier than the disqualification effort started in January and earlier than it was recognized that Mr. Bradley can be subpoenaed to testify.
On the stand final month, Mr. Bradley testified that he “didn’t personally know” Ms. Willis. “My interplay with Ms. Willis was by no means the place I’d choose up the cellphone and speak to her,” he stated.
Additionally unclear is what impression, if any, Ms. Yeager’s assertion might have on a decide’s resolution whether or not to disqualify the prosecutors. The decide, Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court docket, has already wrapped up testimony on the disqualification query; on Friday, he stated he would rule on the matter inside two weeks.
Of their submitting on Monday, Mr. Shafer’s legal professionals requested the decide to permit them to place Ms. Yeager on the stand “within the occasion that the courtroom reopens the listening to to obtain further proof.” They famous that Mr. Trump and Ms. Willis’s workplace have additionally requested the decide to permit for extra testimony.
At a listening to on Friday, Choose McAfee heard last authorized arguments from either side however stated that he might maintain one other listening to if proof emerged to require it.
A lawyer for Mr. Bradley didn’t return calls in search of remark. Ms. Yeager, who has run for native workplace beforehand as a Republican — however says she presently considers herself a Democrat — declined to touch upon the submitting on Monday. A spokesman for the district lawyer’s workplace didn’t touch upon Monday, however Ms. Willis and her workplace have described the disqualification effort as legally baseless and an effort to generate salacious headlines.
If profitable, the trouble to take away Ms. Willis would throw the prison case towards Mr. Trump into turmoil, forcing a state company to search out one other prosecutor to take it on. A brand new prosecutor might transfer to maintain, modify or drop the case towards Mr. Trump, who was indicted in August with 18 allies on prices of conspiring to overturn the previous president’s 2020 election loss in Georgia.
Since then, 4 defendants have pleaded responsible.
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