(Georgia Recorder) — The defense attorney who filed the motion in January seeking to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from the sweeping Trump 2020 presidential election interference case testified Wednesday before a state Senate committee about how she uncovered an affair between the DA and a special prosecutor.
Ashleigh Merchant testified Wednesday before a Senate Special Committee on Investigations that she began requesting open records about Nathan Wade’s contract with Fulton County DA’s office and other details surrounding his November 2021 appointment by Willis shortly after Merchant was hired in August to represent Michael Roman in the election interference case.
In January, the Marietta attorney filed a complaint seeking Willis’ disqualification from the felony racketeering and conspiracy case against Donald Trump and co-defendants. Trump attorney Steve Sadow joined and several other co-defendants would join Merchant’s claim that Willis engaged in prosecutorial misconduct by having a romantic relationship with the attorney she hired to investigate the case.
Merchant testified Wednesday that Terrence Bradley, Wade’s former law partner and divorce lawyer, informed her about Wade and Willis’ affair in September while they were working on separate cases at the Cobb County courthouse.
Bradley was upset that Wade had asked the prosecutor’s longtime wife for a divorce after meeting Willis at a judicial conference while both were municipal court judges in October 2019, Merchant said.
Merchant said Bradley would review the timelines and confirm other details about Wade and Willis before she filed the motion against Willis in January. Bradley grew worried as people associated with Wills and Wade began questioning whether he was the unnamed source cited by Merchant, she testified.
“He was upset because they were still married and (Wade) essentially just left her after meeting Ms. Willis and dropping the kids off at college,” Merchant said.
A three-hour special Senate committee meeting on Wednesday follows several days of tense Superior Court hearings on the motion to dismiss the DA from the election interference case. Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee said Friday that he plans to rule within the next two weeks on whether to remove Willis and the rest of her office staff DAs from the case.
There is a court dispute over whether Wills and Wade were dating prior to Willis’ appointment of Wade as special prosecutor in November 2021. Wade and Willis have testified that their relationship began in early 2022 and ended in the summer of 2023.
The defense has argued that testimony from Robin Bryant-Yeartie, a former friend of Willis who briefly worked in her DA’s office, messages between Merchant and Bradley, and Wade’s cell phone records provide credence that Willis and Wade dated prior to 2021, which is contrary to court testimony of the prosecutors.
During the Fulton court hearings, Bradley avoided on the witness stand disclosing much about Wade’s relationship with Willis and said he was unsure of when the two started dating. On Feb. 15, Bradley admitted that his law partnership with Wade ended in the summer of 2023 after Bradley was accused of sexual assault by an employee. Bradley and Bryant-Yeartie have been portrayed by the state as unreliable witnesses who were disgruntled because their former longtime friends, Wade and Willis, hurt their careers.
Last month, the GOP-controlled Senate approved a panel to investigate Willis’ actions as she pursued the sweeping criminal case against the former president and multiple co-defendants.
Republican Sen. Bill Cowsert, who chairs the special Senate panel, said Wednesday that the panel subpoenaed Merchant to learn more about her allegations against Willis and Wade. Cowsert, an Athens attorney, said the special committee will also independently review the financial records and other documents Merchant provided to them under the subpoena.
“We’re also specifically tasked with, if necessary, amending existing statutes or creating new statutes to build guardrails to essentially restore the public faith in our criminal justice system, ” Cowsert said.
“This committee has made it clear from the beginning it is not our intent in any way to interfere with criminal prosecutions and so I would not want to be circumventing a court order that was for the protection of the privacy of the parties to that case,” Cowsert later said.
Merchant also discussed obtaining Wade’s cell phone data from 2021, which showed 12,000 texts and phone calls between Wade and Willis. A defense expert also filed documents of his geotracking data that he said shows three dozen occasions that Wade’s cell phone was in the vicinity of the Hapeville condo Willis lived in prior to him becoming special prosecutor.
Prosecutors have challenged the reliability of the defense’s geotracking expert and said that the volume of phone calls and text messages does not provide any context about what Wade and Willis were discussing.
Merchant said that Roman declined to accept a plea offered by Wade that would have allowed him to be sentenced to probation and pay a $5,000 fine if he agreed to testify as a state’s witness.
Roman, a former White House aide and Trump campaign operative, was indicted on charges of attempting and conspiring to file false documents related to the alternate Republican electoral plot. In the days after the 2020 election, Trump and other allies encouraged GOP state officials to appoint a second slate of electors prior to Congress certifying Joe Biden as the winner.
In a lengthy back and forth exchange with Democratic Sen. Harold Jones, Merchant was peppered about whether her claims of Willis’s conflict of interest were actually supported by her court filings.
According to Jones, Merchant has not provided evidence in Fulton court that any so-called conflict of interest with Willis has caused Roman to be treated unfairly as a defendant.
Jones also pushed back on Merchant’s claims that Wade and Willis have a financial incentive to play out the case as long as possible.
“Earlier you said you believe, which was total speculation, that they created this case against your client to do more (legal) billing,” said the former Richmond County solicitor general. “And what you’re now telling me is (Wade) was willing to stop his billing because he offered your client a misdemeanor and you rejected it.”
Merchant responded that Willis was not being honest about Wade paying for several cruises and other vacations taken with Willis. She failed to file the financial disclosures form that required her to list any gifts over $100 she received from someone doing business with the county.
Willis has testified in Fulton court she used thousands of dollars in cash primarily to reimburse Wade for trips and other expenses incurred during their relationship.
“We have unfortunately seen drag out over the last couple of months this concerted effort to hide this information from the public,” Merchant said. “I think that it is very reasonable for a court to think that that is a conflict of interest, and whether or not it’s a stake in the conviction, we definitely have seen a stake in the prosecution.”
Following the hearing, Willis said she will continue to pursue a felony racketeering case against Trump and his allies despite the political attacks she’s facing.
