This hearing is about evidence Terrence Bradley might have had, and for the defense teams that called him to the stand, he didn’t deliver.
“He’d made some comments to you along the way that led you to believe he had more knowledge than today he’s testifying that he had,” Judge Scott McAfee said bluntly to defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant on Tuesday afternoon.
Merchant and other defense lawyers in the Georgia election subversion case have been trying to stand up, with days of evidence and witness testimony, allegations that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and the lead prosecutor she hired for the Trump case, Nathan Wade, began an ethically dubious relationship earlier than they’ve said. Both have testified the relationship started after Wade joined Willis’ office in late 2021.
Bradley, a hesitant witness, was finally forced on Tuesday to speak about the years of 2015 to 2022, when he was Wade’s law partner and divorce lawyer.
Bradley had chatted with Merchant over text in recent months about the Wade-Willis relationship starting earlier than that, according to Tuesday’s proceeding.
Merchant recounted in court she had texted Bradley, “‘Do you think it started before she hired him?’ And you said, ‘Absolutely.”
“Do you recall me asking how they would react? Would they attack me? And you told me that they would deny it,” Merchant added.
To that, though, Bradley testified repeatedly he was just speculating.
The defense lawyers, one after another in court, grew frustrated — and confirmed with Bradley he had no direct conversations with Wade or proof of the prosecutors’ relationship beginning more than two years ago.
“I never witnessed anything,” Bradley said under oath. “I do not have knowledge of it starting, or when it started.”
He said he remembers only one conversation, at a time he can’t recall, that Wade told him Wade and Willis were dating.
Source: www.cnn.com