OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Renowned constitutional expert and Georgetown University law professor Jonathan Turley strongly suggested that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is in much more trouble than many people realize during a Fox News interview last week.
Turley was addressing claims that Will and Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor she hired to help with her case against former President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants charged with RICO violations stemming from the aftermath of the 2020 election in Georgia, allegedly made false statements to a court about when their romantic relationship began.
“The astonishing thing about this is that you have two prosecutors who stand accused of filing false statements in court,” said Turley. “Mr. Wade is accused of answering interrogatories falsely. And Willis is accused of making false statements in her filings. That’s what they’re prosecuting defendants in the case for.”
“My question is, will he refer these two to the bar? There are allegations of false statements being filed. Their testimony did not help in that respect. And so will [Judge Scott McAfee] say, ‘Look, I’m going to suggest that one or both of you remove yourselves or maybe even order it, but I am also going to ask the bar to look into these allegations’?”
WATCH:
Co-defendant Michael Roman’s attorneys claimed in a 122-page filing earlier this month that they had a witness whose testimony contradicted Willis’ denials regarding the timeline of her relationship with Wade after she claimed it started after she appointed him as a special prosecutor in the investigation into Trump’s attempts to challenge the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.
In response to a motion by Roman’s attorneys filed on January 8 seeking her disqualification from the case, Willis acknowledged her relationship with Wade in a 176-page court filing on February 2.
NEW: In a new filing, Mike Roman alleges that Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade misrepresented details about their personal relationship and Wade's appointment as special prosecutor.https://t.co/gA3sj1Qoz4
— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) February 9, 2024
In their filing, Roman’s attorneys named a friend of Wade who could corroborate that the relationship began before Willis assumed the role of district attorney, contradicting claims made by Wade in an affidavit attached to Willis’s filing on February 2, wherein he asserted that the relationship did not begin before 2022.
“Willis and Wade claim they did not have a personal, romantic relationship before Willis appointed Wade as a special prosecutor, but Terrence Bradley (‘Bradley’) will refute that claim,” Roman’s attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, said in the filing, according to the Daily Caller.
“Bradley is an attorney and a member of the Georgia Bar. Bradley and Wade were friends and business associates. Bradley has non-privileged, personal knowledge that the romantic relationship between Wade and Willis began before Willis being sworn as the district attorney for Fulton County, Georgia, in January 2021,” the filing continued, per the outlet.
In Friday’s filing, Merchant also revealed two previously undisclosed trips that Wade and Willis took together: a Bahamas cruise in December 2022 and a trip to Belize in March 2023.
This week, a private investigator for Trump’s legal team revealed that newly uncovered cellphone data is casting doubts about previous sworn statements made by Willis and Wade.
The Epoch Times reported that Trump’s legal team in Georgia hired a private investigator to obtain communications between the DA and her special counsel. That investigation reportedly revealed that the couple exchanged over 2,000 calls and 12,000 texts in 2021, raising questions about the timeline of their relationship, per a court filing.
According to the report from the private investigator, Charles Mittelstadt, he used CellHawk, a geo-mapping and analysis program, to note that “more than 2,000 voice calls and just under 12,000 text messages [were] exchanged over the 11-month period in 2021” between the two.
In addition, his report included a heat map that “highlights the interaction patterns which demonstrate a prevalence of calls made in the evening hours.”
According to the affidavit submitted to the court, Willis and Wade appeared to be in frequent communication before they claimed their romantic relationship began. While both have said it began in 2022, a witness and former friend of Willis, Robin Yeartie, has disputed that.
Yeartie argued that she witnessed them romantically involved in 2019, approximately two years before Wade was hired to work on the case.
