The lead prosecutor in the Georgia election subversion case against Donald Trump made several visits, including some late at night, to the area where Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis lived in late 2021 – well before the two say their romantic relationship began, according to a private investigator working with Trump’s attorneys.
Nathan Wade and Willis have been accused of engaging in an improper romantic relationship prior to her selecting him to lead the 2020 election investigation into Trump and his allies. Both Wade and Willis testified at a hearing last week on whether Willis and her office should be disqualified from the case that they began their relationship in early 2022, after he was appointed special prosecutor.
Friday’s filing from Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead attorney in the Georgia case, included an affidavit from a criminal defense investigator who said he relied on subpoenaed cell phone information and cell tower data.
The investigator, Charles Mittelstadt, said he generated a report that isolated “all interactions,” including calls and text messages between Wade and Willis. “That report revealed over 2000 voice calls and just under 12,000 text messages exchanged over the 11-month period in 2021,” he said.
Mittelstadt said a “conservative analysis” shows a minimum of 35 occasions when Wade’s phone was in close proximity for “an extended period” to the address of a condo where Willis stayed. The data does not pinpoint exact locations.
The investigator also says that in September and November of 2021, Wade’s phone traveled several times to the area where the condo is located late into the evening and early morning. In addition, Willis and Wade exchanged phone calls late into the evenings during this time, the investigator says, citing Wade’s subpoenaed cell phone data.
The investigator, working with defense attorneys, served a request for Wade’s cell phone records from AT&T, including call and text history as well as location data, earlier this month.
CNN has reached out to the district attorney’s office and an attorney for Wade for comment.
The condo where Willis stayed came up several times during last week’s hearing when Wade was explicitly asked if he ever stayed the night at the condo.
“Never,” Wade testified.
Trump and several of his co-defendants are arguing Willis’s romantic relationship, which they say has ended, created a conflict of interest and that her office should be removed and the entire case dismissed.
The court battle over whether Willis’s office should be disqualified will resume on March 1, according to a Friday order from Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who said the hearing would be a chance for both parties to make their final arguments on the matter.
On Friday, McAfee also denied a motion by Wade to block his divorce attorney and former law partner, Terrence Bradley, from appearing before the judge to review potentially privileged communications Bradley allegedly made about Wade and Willis’s relationship, according to three sources familiar with the matter. An order does not yet appear on the public docket.
McAfee has called for Bradley and his lawyer to appear at the Fulton County courthouse on Monday at 1:30 p.m. ET for the so-called in camera review that’s conducted in the judge’s chambers, the sources said.
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