Fulton County special prosecutor Nathan Wade is trying to block his former law partner’s testimony slated for an upcoming hearing, where it will be determined whether District Attorney Fani Willis should be disqualified from the Georgia election-interference case against former president Donald Trump and several other co-defendants.
Terrence Bradley, Wade’s former law partner and divorce lawyer, is expected to testify early next week about the timeline of the romantic relationship between Wade and Willis.
In a 12-page motion filed Thursday, Wade urged Fulton County superior court judge Scott McAfee to refrain from holding a private meeting with Bradley because he believes the testimony could violate attorney–client privilege.
“The Court should not conduct the examination under any circumstance,” Wade’s attorney wrote.
The motion comes after Judge McAfee held two days of evidentiary hearings last Thursday and Friday. At the time, Bradley repeatedly refused to answer questions in court about the personal relationship’s details.
Wade appears to be intent on keeping it that way, according to the new motion.
“If the Court were now to disregard ‘the most sacred of all legally recognized privileges’ whose ‘preservation is essential to the just and orderly operation of our legal system,’ it would be a step too far, and Special Prosecutor Wade is constrained to object,” his filing reads.
Earlier this month, Trump co-defendant Mike Roman’s lawyer, Ashleigh Merchant, said they could prove with testimony that the relationship began before Willis appointed Wade to the high-profile Georgia case in 2021. Both Willis and Wade have maintained that they started dating after already working on the case together, but the defense claimed their relationship started as early as 2019.
The defendants argue that the pair of Georgia prosecutors would have committed perjury by lying about their relationship’s start date. If the testimony proves true, then attorney–client privilege couldn’t be used to cover up the felony.
“The Defendants sought to introduce intrusive and legally irrelevant personal details of multiple people’s lives for the world to watch unfold in real time, but still no credible evidence exists in the record to support their tenuous claims,” Wade’s motion states.
In January, Merchant first revealed that Willis hired Wade to lead the prosecution against Trump and 18 of his allies, all of whom were indicted in August under Georgia’s version of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act for their alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state. Four of the co-defendants have already pleaded guilty.
During the evidentiary hearings last week, Wade and Willis testified that their dating relationship started in spring 2022 and ended in summer 2023. Bradley said he had no personal knowledge of when the relationship began, but the defense argued that the evidence could be found in Bradley’s text messages.
McAfee plans to review those messages during a closed-door hearing scheduled for Monday.