Special prosecutor Nathan Wade made late-night visits to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s condo prior to his hiring, an attorney for one of former President Donald Trump’s co-defendants said.
The trial surrounding Willis’s hiring of Wade has faced frequent twists and turns, with attorneys and witnesses claiming to have knowledge that would directly contradict their testimony under oath. Attorneys seeking to forbid Willis from prosecuting Trump in his Georgia racketeering trial floated the claim about midnight condo visits before, pointing to cellphone data showing Wade was in Willis’s residence’s vicinity. However, Wednesday’s offered them a different venue to reiterate the point.
“It’s pinging from his house all the way down to the condo at midnight, 1 a.m. And then he calls her when he gets there. And then it goes silent for four or five hours. And then, you know, early in the morning hours, he starts pinging again, driving back, and then he texts her when he gets home,” defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant said, referring to geolocation data from Wade’s cellphone.
Last month, state attorneys argued that geolocation data is unreliable as evidence, but Merchant noted that the state is “currently using the same data in another courtroom to prosecute someone, but in their defense in ours was that it’s not reliable.”
Merchant outlined the argument during a hearing in front of the Republican-controlled state Senate on Wednesday.
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The hearing is separate from the actual trial, and nothing during the committee’s hearing on Wednesday is admissible for the record in the Fulton County Superior Court proceedings. However, the committee could look to subpoena Willis or other prosecutors as they investigate whether the district attorney misused taxpayer funds.
Allegations of an improper affair between Willis and Wade first emerged in January and has since been admitted to by the pair. The area of contention is the timeline of the affair, which Trump and his codefendant’s attorneys argue began before Willis hired Wade, presenting a conflict of interest.
