A new witness has come forward saying she is able to provide testimony about Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis‘s previously undisclosed relationship with a prosecutor she hired to help with the election interference case against President Donald Trump, according to a court document filed Monday.
One of Trump’s co-defendants, David Shafer, said in the filing that attorney Cindi Lee Yeager, who works for the neighboring district attorney’s office in Cobb County, was struck by a previous witness testifying that he could not recall when Willis’s romantic relationship with prosecutor Nathan Wade began.
Yeager said she had several in-person conversations with the witness, Terrence Bradley, beginning in August 2023, according to the court filing.
Contrary to what Bradley indicated under oath last week, Yeager said Bradley told her in detail about how Willis and Wade’s relationship began before Willis hired him in November 2021, according to the filing. The relationship began around the time Willis and Wade met in 2019, Bradley allegedly told Yeager.
Willis and Wade both said under oath that their relationship began after Wade’s hiring.
Shafer said that if Judge Scott McAfee reopened evidence on the issue of disqualifying Willis, he would subpoena Yeager and she would provide that testimony, which would contradict Bradley’s, Willis’s, and Wade’s sworn testimonies on the matter.
McAfee is currently weighing whether to disqualify Willis from her own case after Trump and several co-defendants argued it had been irreversibly tainted by a conflict of interest. The co-defendants have offered evidence showing Willis and Wade went on vacations together, which, they say, indicates that Willis financially benefited from the high-dollar wage she was paying Wade using public funds. Willis and Wade both testified that they split the costs of outings roughly evenly and that she sometimes reimbursed him in untraceable cash.
Aside from the financial considerations, McAfee also previously expressed interest in considering whether Willis and Wade were romantically involved when she hired him in November 2021 as McAfee examined a possible conflict of interest. Willis and Wade both testified that their romantic involvement did not begin until after that time. Willis has also argued that the relationship has had no impact whatsoever on the Trump case.
Bradley, Wade’s former divorce lawyer, was called by defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant as a witness to testify on the start of the relationship. But when he was confronted about a text he sent in which he explicitly said Willis and Wade started dating before November 2021, Bradley shiftily stated that he was only speculating when he wrote it.
Hundreds of texts leaked to the media after Bradley’s testimony, however, showed Bradley also elaborately coordinated with Merchant to bring to light the conflict of interest allegations in January of this year.
Now, Shafer says Yeager can further speak to Bradley’s knowledge of the relationship between Willis and Wade.
Shafer also stated in his filing that Yeager heard Willis on a phone call attempt to silence Bradley in September 2023 when Willis saw a news article that stated how much money Wade and his colleagues had made. It is unclear which article Willis would have been reacting to, but the Washington Examiner was the first media outlet to bring attention that month to the payments Wade, Bradley, and another colleague had received for their work in Fulton.
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“Ms. Yeager could hear that the caller was District Attorney Willis. District Attorney Willis was calling Mr. Bradley in response to an article that was published about how much money Mr. Wade and his law partners had been paid in this case. Ms. Yeager heard District Attorney Willis tell Mr. Bradley: ‘They are coming after us. You don’t need to talk to them about anything about us,’” the filing stated.
It is unclear whether McAfee will approve Shafer’s motion to allow Yeager to submit testimony and whether it would make a difference in his final decision on whether to disqualify Willis. The judge said Friday that he would issue his decision sometime in the next two weeks.
