Legal analysts have widely praised Donald Trump's legal team for seeking new testimony from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in the former president's election-fraud case in Georgia.
Trump's lawyers hired a phone-records analyst to prove that prosecutor Nathan Wade was staying over at the home of Willis, long before she hired him to lead the election-fraud case. Trump's team is trying to prove that Willis hired Wade because they were in a relationship and that the district attorney should step away from the Trump case. Newsweek reached out to Trump's lawyer and Willis' office via email for comment on Monday.
The frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination and 18 co-defendants have been accused of conspiring to overturn Joe Biden's 2020 election win in Georgia. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges and repeatedly said that the case was politically motivated as he is the likely GOP nominee for the White House.
On Friday, Trump's lawyers filed a supplemental brief, asking the trial judge to review new information including an affidavit from private investigator Charles Mittelstadt, who analyzed Wade's cellphone location data. The investigator said the information showed that, in 2021, Wade arrived at Willis' home late at night twice and left in the early-morning hours, once in September and the other time in November.
In a new filing submitted on Sunday afternoon, Trump's lawyers argued against Willis' Friday-night filing, in which she said that: "The records do not prove, in any way, the content of the communications between Special Prosecutor Wade and District Attorney Willis; they do not prove that Special Prosecutor Wade was ever at any particular location or address; they do not prove that Special Prosecutor Wade and District Attorney Willis were ever in the same place during any of the times listed."
Trump's lawyers wrote in response on Sunday: "The prosecution will surely point out that nobody knows what was happening in the house between midnight and 3:28 a.m. on September 12, or between midnight and 5:00 a.m. on November 30. Mittelstadt does not claim to know. Neither does President Trump or any other defendant in this case."
They added: "Only two people know. They are certainly the ones who should testify and say exactly what was happening on those occasions, so nobody will complain about improper speculation, or improper efforts to distort the truth, or nefarious contacts with the media."
Trump's lawyers are also seeking Nathan Wade's phone records to prove that he was in a relationship with Willis before the election-fraud case began.
Attorney Andrew Fleischman, a partner at Sessions & Fleischman in Georgia, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that Sunday's filing was the best so far by Steven Sadow, Trump's lawyer in the case.
Fleischmann added that Sadow "describes the evidence fairly, without overstatement, in a way that is still kind of devastating."
Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti wrote on X on Sunday that Trump's lawyers will likely win their battle for Wade's phone records, even if they are not allowed to present an expert witness to explain the data.
"Trump's team will likely win this one. It's possible that their witness is kept out or his testimony is limited because he's not offered as an expert, but the evidence is likely coming in," Mariotti said.
Atlanta, Georgia-based legal professor Anthony Michael Kreis wrote on X on Sunday that Sadow's latest filing seeking is "A+ lawyering."
Willis and Wade, the prosecutor she hired in 2021 to lead the racketeering case against the former president, have been under fire for a personal relationship that ended in the summer of 2023.
Last week, Judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the case, held a series of hearings to determine if Willis and her office will be disqualified from the case. Trump and some of his co-defendants not only argued for the removal of Willis' office, but also for the entire case to be dropped due to what they perceive as a conflict of interest.
However, Willis and Wade have said that their relationship started in the spring of 2022 after Willis hired him and that neither have financially benefited from it.
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Sean O'Driscoll is a Newsweek Senior Crime and Courts Reporter based in Ireland. His focus is reporting on U.S. law. ... Read more
