Whole 'Nother Terrence!

I've echoed the puzzlement of several commentators here over the past couple of weeks -- why did Anna Cross, the counsel in the DA's office representing Willis and Wade, suddenly, gratuitously, and viciously attack Terrence Bradley on the witness stand by bringing up the sexual harassment allegations against him, when Bradley appeared to be doing nothing to damage their interests? After all, he was trying his hardest to have his testimony excluded on the basis of attorney-client privilege.

Let's start with what's obvious. Ashleigh Merchant, the attorney for Trump co-defendant Michael Roman, is a blonde bombshell. As it happens, she is also one of the most prominent Georgia defense attorneys -- one of her cases, entirely unrelated, was featured on A&E's Taking the Stand just two weeks ago. Nevertheless, that notwithstanding, I suspect Judge McAfee, and likely many other judges, feels his day goes just a little bit better any time she's in his courtroom. She is aware of this and takes full advantage of it.

This is a normal male impulse. As an avid fan of On Patrol: Live and the previous Live PD, I can't avoid noting that almost all the departments that allow the show to follow their officers feature one or more female officers who are in fact stunningly attractive -- at least one does beauty pageants on her off duty days. I've remarked to my wife that if I knew one of those officers would be the one to pull me over, I'd make an illegal left turn and risk a ticket right in front of her just to get ten minutes of her time and attention while she asked me questions about myself.

So let's apply this to the case of poor Terrence Bradley, who came off in his testimony Tuesday as "a combination of imbecilic and an amnesiac" and in fact appeared to be a staunch Willis-Wade loyalist. Why were they out to get him? The answer is Ashleigh Merchant. He'd been texting her back and forth since last fall, and the difference between then and yesterday is, as one commentator put it, "a whole 'nother Terrence".

Bradley’s testimony on Tuesday, when he frequently couldn’t remember details and seemed uncomfortable with the line of questioning, stands in stark contrast to the tone of his prior text messages with Merchant.

The additional text messages [released yesterday] show Bradley calling Merchant his “friend,” offering unsolicited advice, and also bashing Willis and Wade, Bradley’s former law partner.

Bradley left their law firm in 2022 after allegations surfaced that Bradley sexually assaulted an employee at the firm. Bradley denied those allegations while testifying at an earlier hearing over Willis’s potential disqualification.

Over months of texts, Bradley on a number of occasions disparaged Wade and Willis, calling them “arrogant as f” in one January text to Merchant.

Bradley also indicated that he didn’t want to be directly connected to the allegations and expressed a desire not to be named as the initial source of the information.

“I protected you completely,” Merchant told Bradley about the draft of her motion to disqualify. “Not that you need protection,” Merchant texted. “But I kept you out of it.”

“I really appreciate you keeping me out of,” Bradley replied.

So the answer to the question of why Willis and Wade would have their counsel trash Terrence in public is that Terrence had been trashing them behind their backs for months, and they'd belatedly become aware of it despite Terrence's best efforts. And a good part of the reason for that is that Terrence had been charmed by a beautiful woman who was also very smart. In fact, she was both pretty enough and smart enough to use Terrence to get to Willis and Wade -- the dirt Terrence so eagerly gave her became the foundation of her case for her client and was bound to become a public record, with Terrence as the source.

Terrence, an attorney, should maybe have had an inkling, although it looks like the Wade Bradley Campbell law firm were personal injury attorneys and not well informed about other areas of the law. Terrence, Wade,and Willis were outsmarted by a very pretty attorney who was also very smart. The attack on Terrence from Wade and Willis was delayed payback, and I can't completely blame them, except they all let themselves be outplayed by a highly skilled operator.

I Love A Contrarian

I wasted more than two hours yesteday watching Terrence Bradley's testimony in the Fani Willis-Nathan Wade hearing. I watched the usual commentators, but Michael Lebron, who posts on YouTube as Lionel, had the best series of takes in the link at the top of this post:

First of all, I don't want to be a killjoy, and I don't want to ruin anybody's fun, but much too much has been made of his testimony. I'm sorry, I know that's horrible to say, I know people think like this is the most important -- it's not the most important thing in the least. . . . What it was is an abssolute cluster[redacted] in terms of lying on parade, the likes of which nobody has ever seen. And it was a beautiful combination of lying and absolute stupidity.

. . . This is a grown man. This is a lawyer who is a combination of imbecilic and an amnesiac. . . . I've never seen this before. . . . This guy is just a buffoon. . . . I'm thinking maybe he's like jumping on the grenade. Maybe he's, he's, deliberately acting this stupid so that we'll forrgetr Fani, Fanny, whatever her name is, and Wade, and forget about . . . and meanwhile, what they forget about is Trump. Trump's not even in this anymore.

Bradley has been a puzzle all along. Commentators after his February 16 testimony, in which he struggled to do exactly what he did today, answer no substantive questions, were stumped by why Anna Cross, the counsel for Willis's office, then proceeded systematically to assassinate Bradley's character by bringing out allegations of sexual harassment against him. The commentators more or less assumed this would destroy any further support and cooperation Bradley might give to Willis and Wade, and once the judge ruled attorney-client privilege didn't apply, Bradley would feel free to spill all.

Didn't happen. Omerta continued to prevail throughout the day. Another commentator, David Freiheit posting as Viva Frei, ploints out at 6:30 below,

Notable as to who was there and who wasn't there, Fani Willis was not there. Anna Cross, the attorney who opened up this entire can of worms, also not there. Who was there? Nathan Wade was there. Nathan Wade was there and as I observed at the time, at some point during the testimony was standing up, staring down at Terrence Bradley on the stand, I won't say menacingly, because that's subjective, but definitely staring him down. . . . In fact,he was staring him down for a good portion of his testimony, as we saw from a few moments where they panned through the room and saw Nathan Wade in the courtroom.

. . . And then I guess after Nathan Wade got the assurance that Terrence was gonna play ball and not rat him out, Nathan Wade was gone.

All anyone can conclude is that Wade in particular had some even greater hold on Bradley that went beyond the character assassination in the sexual harassment allegations that were brought out on February 16, and Bradley was most assiduously toeing the line. That Bradley had been heavily coached, despite his insistence under oath that he hadn't been, seems to have been plain to the Trump defendants' counsel as well as likely to Judge McAfee.

The bigger question is whether, or how, Bradley's non-testimony will affect Judge McAfee's conclusions. I'm inclined to go along with Lionel, that it's de minimis. But Alan Dershowitz posted his reactions:

At 3:02:

I saw with my own eyes how he testified, and how he provided very revelatory information about it. The information, the revelatory information was not necessarily in his testimony, it was in his texts. It was in the texts that he had written to the lawyer which he confirmed as true. You could not come away from that two-hour hearing without absolutely believing that this guy, Terrence Bradley, had told the lawyers for Trump's codefendants thaat the relationship definitely began before he was hired as special prosecutor, which they have sworn is the opposite. You could not escape that. And the judge knows that.

At 5:40 he assesses:

I'm just not sure what the judge is going to do in this case. This is very hard, this is a judge in Fulton County. Will the judge have the cojones to actually look the elected district attorney in the eye and say, "I have listened to your tetimony, I've listened to your boyfriend's testimony, I've listened to his lawyer's testimony, I do not believe you." Will he have the nerve to say that? I don't think so. I don't think so. But if he's an honest and decent judge, at the very least, he'll find that they are recused. If I had to bet widows' and orphans' money that I couldn't afford to lose, on the outcome, probably a safe bet would be that he will recuse the special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, because that's easy, she can get somebody else, saying there's an appearance of injustice. . .

This leaves out the practical issues of replacing Wade before we get to any other problem. Fani isn't very bright, but she's bright enough to know that whomever she appoints to that job has to be absolutely beholden to her and in her pocket, as Wade clearly was, especially in the wake of this whole kerfuffle. An outsider would presumably be coming in having to deal with dirty laundry all over the place left over from the highly compromised Wade-Willis relationship, and Willis would need to be able to rely on the replacement to keep things under cover.

That would be a hard choice for Fani, and it would likely provide additional openings in additional discovery for the Trump et al defense. And it would leave aside the question of how long it would take Wade's successor to come up to date on the case -- and in fact, it would leave aside the serious question of whether Wade himself had actually done much on the case before being removed.

And that in turn leaves aside that however Judge McAfee rules, the losing side will appeal. This whole case is out of reach if the intent is to get a conviction before the election.

It Looks Like The Whole Fulton County Case Was A Grift

As pieces of the puzzle straggle in, I was impressed by the juxtaposition of Nathan Wade's non-report report on the Cobb County jail death scandal from 2020 with what we now know about the timeline of his relationship with Fani Willis. As I linked yesterday,

When Wade finished his investigation later that year, he released no formal public report about what led to the deaths at the notoriously dangerous lock-up.

Asked about his findings for a local TV news investigation, Wade conceded that he created no “documents, communications, or records memorializing, reflecting evidence, or relating to the work,” according to the news station, 11Alive.

“I have obviously my brainchild, what’s going on in my mind about it. That’s what I have,” Wade told a lawyer for 11Alive who was trying to obtain Sheriff’s Department internal records about the probe through public records act requests. That outcome was condemned by local criminal justice reform activists and defense attorneys, some of whom said Wade’s investigation helped the Sheriff’s Department use the pretense of an ongoing investigation to deny public access to potentially embarrassing records.

The link said Wade was engaged to pretend to do a report in June 2020 and finished not writing it some months later. We don't know how much he was paid, nor exactly when he finished, but it's worth noting that by November of that year, he was working with Fani's transition team following her election as Fulton County DA. We do know, as I linked yesterday, that following Ms Willis's taking over the DA's office on January 1, 2021, Wade's law partners got contracts from her office, Christopher Campbell at $150 per hour starting that month and Terrence Bradley for $74,480 over the course of the year. In March and April, Campbell had an additional contract for $65 an hour.

It appears that Wade and Willis were attempting to keep their relationship secret, especially during this period, although Wade's presence and influence in the office was well known to the workers there. Although Willis didn't give Wade any direct contract, the contracts to his partners would have entitled Wade to a third of their billing under their partnership agreement. Thus, at least from January 2021, Wade was receiving indirect payments from Willis, although accounts of his role in the office suggest Wade was the individual who actually selected his partners for the contracts.

In April 2021, Willis moved into Robin Yeartie's condo in Hapeville, which appears to have been used to maintain the secrecy of her relationship with Wade. The Mittelstadt affadavit reported 35 assignations between Willis and Wade at this condo before November of 2021.

It seems to me that what we're seeing is a relationship based on secrecy that embraced not just sex but money, pretty much from the start, and at least from June of 2020, Wade had established himself as a grifter who was collecting fees for not doing things. By the time the Cobb County grift ran out, he had apparently become fully involved with Willis, who by implication in her testimony on February 15 was broke after spending $50,000 on an election she lost. Wade was not only going to keep her warm at night, he was going to make her rich again.

The record shows that Willis was routing cash to Wade before he was named special prosecutor, but once the budget became available for the RICO election interference case, they started riding the gravy train. The question I've had for some time is how this plum landed in Fulton County onto the laps of Willis and Wade -- yes, the White House was pursuing a lawfare strategy against Trump in general, but with so many opportunities at the federal, state, and local levels, why Fulton County in particular?

A Breitbart story from yesterday gives at least a clue:

The Biden administration planted a Democrat operative inside a Fulton County office to target former President Donald Trump, multiple sources familiar with the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office exclusively told Breitbart News.

. . . One significant figure is overlooked in the Fulton County scandal concerning Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis and her alleged lover and fellow prosecutor Nathan Wade, the sources said: Meet Jeff DiSantis — the county’s Deputy District Attorney with professional experience far greater than the average county employee. DiSantis worked on Willis’s 2020 campaign, sources told Breitbart News, and was the former Executive Director of the Democrat Party of Georgia with extensive knowledge of campaign finance law.

. . . Sources credit DiSantis with colluding with the White House to target Trump. “DiSantis did this,” one source told Breitbart News about the Trump case. “He’s the one. He is the one pulling all the strings. He was the one that walled her [Willis] off. He was in every important meeting. He is the brainchild behind this. That is the connection to the White House.”

. . . Sources also revealed that DiSantis was a member of Willis’s transition team after she won the election in November 2020. DiSantis helped Wade select employees for the new office. “DiSantis was there in the capacity to be a political strategist, hiding in the DA’s office,” a source told Breitbart News.

But here's the problem. Wade already appears to have been the kind of guy who'd bill for doing nothing, while one frequent observation about Willis, given her performance on February 15, is that she isn't very smart. More than one commentator has asked why Trump would want to remove Willis as prosecutor if she's as incompetent as she now seems. What on earth was the White House expecting to get from this team? They weren't going to work very hard, and they weren't going to work very smart, but they sure were going to bill for their services, and that's exactly what they did.

The most I can think is that the White House was aiming for quick indictments and then convictions before the 2024 election in politically reliable jurisdictions, and if the convictions were overturned later, it would be after the election when it didn't matter. If so, it wouldn't matter if the prosecutors were corrupt and incompetent.

That was at best a miscalculation.

Drip, Drip, Drip

This piece at Breitbart both raises and answers some intriguing questions about Fani Willis's relationship with Nathan Wade:

Nathan Wade “made the decisions to hire or fire” employees in Fulton County District Attorney’s Office following Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis’ election victory in November 2020, multiple sources familiar with the Wade and Willis relationship exclusively told Breitbart News.

. . . Wade led a transition team of ten to twelve people who interviewed and evaluated current employees to remain in Willis’ newly won office just weeks after she won the election in November, said the sources, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution due to their direct knowledge of the environment inside the District Attorney’s Office, which they characterized as “corrupt.”

This corroborates the statement by former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes in his February 16 testimony that Wade was present in the 2021 meeting in which Barnes was asked if he was interested in the special prosecutor's role. Several commentators asked at the time why Wade, who hadn't yet been named special prosecutor at the time of that interview, was nevertheless present and apparently involved in personnel decisions.

The answer seems to be that from before she assumed office as Fulton County District Attorney on January 1, 2021, Wade, at least by the account of Breitbart's sources, had been some kind of unpaid consigliere to Willis. That he was in the meeting with Barnes at an unspecified date in 2021 was apparently consistent with that role. But if these sources are correct, Wade must have spent quite a bit of time on this, time that otherwise would have been billable for his law practice. One of the Breitbart sources gave an account of his involvement:

“Willis said everyone in the office was essentially all terminated, and that essentially we had to reapply for our jobs and must submit an application and schedule a time to appear for an interview,” a source said. “We had to reapply and came back in so they could interview everyone — from lawyers to paralegals to assistants to investigators.”

“And in that room, in my interview, there were a lot of people other than Fani Willis. And that was her transition team. I definitely know that Nathan Wade was in that room because he was taking the lead role,” the source stated. “And I was a little confused because I had never seen him before.”

“I had about maybe ten people in the interview,” another source described the reinterview process with Wade. “Nathan definitely was up moving around and taking charge in the room. Wade hired the entire office of 250 employees,” the person said. “I was just telling him my employment background, and they just sit there and looked at me and they said well, ‘you’ll get an email on our decision.’ And that’s what Wade said. And he looked at Willis. They looked at each other. And there was just something so weird going on.”

This environment seems consistent with the previous account of whistleblower and former Willis staffer Amanda Timpson, who confronted Willis in a November 21, 2021 meeting

after the DA’s former campaign social media manager Michael Cuffee planned to use part of a nearly $500,000 grant for travel, computers and “swag,” according to audio obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

“He wanted to do things with grants that were impossible, and I kept telling him, like, ‘We can’t do that,’” Timpson is heard telling Willis in the recording. “He told everybody … ‘We’re going to get MacBooks, we’re going to get swag, we’re going to use it for travel.’ I said, ‘You cannot do that, it’s a very, very specific grant.’”

. . . [O]n Jan.14, 2022, Willis fired Timpson, who oversaw the office’s juvenile diversion program, and had her escorted out of the building with seven armed investigators, the ex-employee told the Free Beacon.

In an interview with the outlet, Timpson said the purported abuse of the grant was “very similar” to Willis’ office splurging on lavish vacations with private attorney, Nathan Wade, with whom she was allegedly carrying on a “clandestine” affair.

“My case and Nathan Wade’s case are very similar when you break them down point by point,” Timpson told the outlet. “Ethical violations, abuse of power, and the misuse of county, state, and federal funds.”

The firing of Timpson also seems consistent with the accounts of Wade's earlier role of shadow personnel director, where he weeded out potentially disloyal staff. Although he was appointed special prosecutor on November 1, 2021, he seems to have continued his previous role as shadow advisor to Willis after that time. But how did he benefit from this role before November 1, 2021? One way would have been contracts from Willis'soffice to his law firm:

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis hired her alleged lover’s law partner to work for her office at a rate of $150 an hour, according to documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation—an arrangement that is raising eyebrows among legal experts who question her spending of public funds.

Christopher Campbell, a partner at Wade & Campbell Firm, has received $126,070 from the Office of the District Attorney since 2021, according to county records. Willis hired Campbell to provide services as a “Taint Attorney,” reviewing privileged evidence beginning in Jan. 2021 at a rate of $150 an hour, contracts obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation show.

. . . Wade and Campbell’s former law partner, Terrence Bradley, has also been paid $74,480 by the District Attorney’s Office since 2021, according to county records.

Under a separate contract spanning from March 1, 2021, to April 30, 2021, Campbell was also hired to provide services as a “First Appearance Attorney” at a rate of $65 an hour, according to the document.

. . . “This is a mystery in and of itself,” Atlanta-based criminal defense attorney and legal analyst Philip Holloway told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “I have no clue why any DA’s office needs to pay a private lawyer to handle ‘first appearance’ calendars. Any assistant DA could easily do that. They are already on the payroll and it is the most simple of all tasks.”

Testimony from both Wade and Bradley at the February 15-16 evidentiary hearing indicated that income to the firm was split three ways, so that the fees paid to Campbell and Bradley would also have been paid one third to Wade. This suggests that this was at least one back-channel way to funnel payments to Wade for his role in Willis's office. But there has been at least one other question about Wade's performance as an attorney:

Wade was hired by the Cobb County Sheriff’s Department in June 2020, after more than a year and a half of brutally critical media coverage about the deaths of predominantly Black inmates, including one who begged repeatedly to be sent to the hospital for nearly eight hours while struggling to breathe.

. . . [Deputy Chief] Allen wrote that she retained Wade’s law firm to review cases "that have involved alleged excessive use of force, deadly force, discrimination or neglect ... with a fine-tooth comb.”

When Wade finished his investigation later that year, he released no formal public report about what led to the deaths at the notoriously dangerous lock-up.

Asked about his findings for a local TV news investigation, Wade conceded that he created no “documents, communications, or records memorializing, reflecting evidence, or relating to the work,” according to the news station, 11Alive.

“I have obviously my brainchild, what’s going on in my mind about it. That’s what I have,” Wade told a lawyer for 11Alive who was trying to obtain Sheriff’s Department internal records about the probe through public records act requests. That outcome was condemned by local criminal justice reform activists and defense attorneys, some of whom said Wade’s investigation helped the Sheriff’s Department use the pretense of an ongoing investigation to deny public access to potentially embarrassing records.

So Wade is an interesting guy with an interesting background. Over the weekend, Congessman Jim Jordan announced that the House Judiciary Committee has been speaking with Amanda Timpson:

“We haven’t heard back from her yet — we’ll see what we get from her — but there’s a whistleblower in her office who we have talked to, our committee staff,” he said.

. . . "We'll see where it goes," Jordan added.

It looks like indeed we will. I suspect that the sources who spoke to Breitbart are close to Timpson and the House Judiciary Committee.

Let's Back Up And Look At The Big Picture

Two events over the past few days may not seem very closely related, but I think that together, they represent the collapse of the White House 2024 game plan and begin to explain the increasing dissatisfaction from Denocrats with the state of Biden's campaign. The events are the release of Nathan Wade's phone tracking data and Nikki Haley's 20-point-plus loss to Donald Trump in her home state primary.

The central point of the White House reelection plan was recognizing that Joe Biden isn't a good candidate. He wasn't good in 2020, but they were able to use COVID to keep him off the campaign trail, and they were somehow able either to keep him sober or medicate him effectively before the debates, so that he beat the limited expectations for his debate performance, in that he didn't garble the names of world leaders or whatever, as he has routinely been doing more recently.

So the plan as of the middle of last year was to hobble Trump's campaign performance by putting him on trial, in particular by starting the January 6 federal trial in Washington by March 5, the day before the Super Tuesday primaries. Then, although no firm date had been set for the classified documents trial in Florida or the Fulton County RICO trial, both were expected to get under way by May, putting them at the end of the primary season and before the convention.

It was apparently expected, especially if the trials could provide explosive testimony from former Trumpers who'd copped guilty pleas, that these would heavily damage Trump's prospects in the primaries and help candidates like Nikki Haley, whom the Democrats apparently felt would be easier for Biden to beat in the general election.

Haley's own campaign strategy has in fact dovetailed with these expectations.

Nikki Haley’s recent comments suggest that she sees a sweet spot for her campaign as former President Donald Trump’s legal drama intensifies – and potentially results in a criminal conviction – in the coming months.

“Just wait, just wait. March, April, May, June,” the former South Carolina governor said on Wednesday when asked about Trump’s support typically strengthening when he shows up in court. “When you see this and he is completely distracted and the American people are worried about the $34 trillion in debt, they are worried that their kids can’t read. … They are worried about wars around the world and he is talking about how he is victim.”

While Haley predicts that support for Trump will drop off in the coming months as he spends more time in the courtroom, she has also made the case that voters will not support Trump if he is criminally convicted.

The problem is that Trump's legal drama isn't intensifying, it's degenerating into farce. One YouTube commentator compares the Willis-Wade revelations to the Jussie Smollett case, with its enduring images of hired bodybuilders wearing MAGA hats and phony nooses, but Willis-Wade will likely prove more archeypal and damaging to the lawfare campaign. The CNN link continues,

“Now he has three judgments against him. He’s going to be in court March and April, May and June. He has said himself he is going to spend more time in a courtroom than he is on the campaign trail. And so he’s been on a rant about what a victim he is,” Haley told supporters at a campaign event in her home state of South Carolina on Wednesday.

So if this was Haley's expectation only a few days ago, it's been overtaken by events. The Washington January 6 federal trial is on indefinite hold pending appeals to the US Supreme Court. The Fulton County case, if it survives dismissal following Judge McAfee's decision, probably can't now be tried this year, and those who'd pled guilty, possibly in anticipation of providing testimony for the prosecution, will likely withdraw their pleas. The Florida classified documents case, which might have begun in May, is likely to be delayed by Trump's latest motions, which will be appealed if the trial court denies them.

The only other pending case is the Alvin Bragg Stormy Daniels hush money case in New York, which the electorate is likely to treat as a joke, just as it treated the two earlier New York cases. It's understoiod, in fact, that those cases simply drove Trump upward in the polls. Any criminal conviction for Trump before the election is highly unlikely, and it's in fact less likely that any of the cases outside New York can come to trial before the election at all.

Most recently, Haley has been claiming that although she doesn't win majorities, she does get 40% of the primary vote. One problem with that claim is that many of those votes are from crossover Democrats hoping to boost her chances in the November election. A second issue that I think may emerge is related to the Kari Lake scandal last month in Arizona:

Arizona Republican Party Chairman Jeff DeWit resigned Wednesday following the release of an audio tape in which he allegedly tried to bribe GOP firebrand Kari Lake not to run for Senate, as the controversial Lake mounts another campaign for office in the state.

. . . “There are very powerful people who want to keep you out,” DeWit can be heard saying in the recording, reportedly taken at Lake’s home in March 2023, before asking Lake for a “number.”

DeWit explained in the tape that the “powerful people” wanted to make way for a new party standard bearer.

So are those same powerful people bankrolling Nikki Haley's continued Quixotic campaign to beat Trump? This may well be exposed in coming weeks; it's generally assumed that she's running with unstated Democrat support.

Plan A is rapidly being overtaken by events, and there's no Plan B. Whatever develops in coming months, the lawfare campaign isn't working, and that's going to thwart any plan to make anyone but Trump the nominee. Meanwhile, the likelihood that Biden won't be able to undertake a strenuous reelection campaign increases.

Maybe Not Such A Surprise

The big news yesterday was a "twist" in the Wade-Willis affair that came from "new evidence":

Phone records, recently unveiled in new court documents obtained by The Post, indicate a pattern of late-night visits by Wade to Willis’s apartment, raising questions about the timeline of their relationship.

According to the cellphone data presented in court, Wade frequented the vicinity of Fulton County District Attorney Willis’s condo in Hapeville at least 35 times before their confessed affair.

. . . Investigator Charles Mittelstadt, in his report to Fulton County Superior Court, emphasized the sheer volume of evidence. He highlighted two specific dates that caught his attention, revealing Wade’s presence near Willis’s apartment in September 2021 until the wee hours of the morning, followed by a late-night rendezvous in November of the same year.

. . . Mittelstadt highlighted times that refuted both Wade’s and Willis’s testimony that they had not begun a relationship prior to November 2021, and that he had only visited the apartment on occasion to discuss business.

“I was directed into a deeper analysis on two specific dates: September 11-12, 2021 (before I understand Mr Wade was hired) and November 29-30 (prior to what I understand was the in-court testimony that the romantic relationship began in 2022).

“Specifically, on September 11, 2021, Mr Wade’s phone left the Doraville area and arrived within the geoface located on the Dogwood address at 10.45pm,” Mittelstadt said.

“The phone remained there until September 12 at 3.28am at which time the phone traveled directly to towers located in East Cobb consistent with his routine pinging at his residence in the area. The phone arrived in East Cobb at approximately 4.05am, and records demonstrate he sent a text at 4.20am to Ms Willis.

This is juicy enough, but Megyn Kelly in the YouTube podcast below cites specific questions by Michael Roman's and Donald Trump's lawyers during last weeks's evidentiary hearing that strongly suggest the defense was fully aware of this information as of then.

At 7:29:

Mr Wade: Have gone to condo in Hapeville, yes ma'am

Ms Merchant: So you have gone to a condo with Ms Willis in Hapeville.

Mr Wade: I have.

Ms Merchant: Have you spent the night there.

Mr Wade: Never.

Ms Merchant: Never spent the night.

At 7:42:

Ms Merchant: Did Mr Wade ever visit you at the condo that you leased from Ms Yeartie?

Ms Willis: He visited that condo.

Ms Merchant: He visited that condo.

Ms Willis: Yes, he did.

Ms Merchant: Did he ever spend the night at that condo?

Ms Willis: No.

Ms Merchant: Just visited.

Ms Willis: Yeah, but he did visit for sure.

Kelly's podcast then moves to Trump's attorney Steven Sadow's examination of Ms Willis. At 8:00:

Mr Sadow: Did anyone else stay with you at the Yeartie condo, including Ms Yeartie?

Ms Willis: Never. Ms Yeartie never lived in the condo --

Mr Sadow: My word was "stayed", not "lived", "stayed". "Stayed" with you at the condo.

Ms Willis: I guess I don't understand the distinction, but no one ever -- I think my baby, my oldest child, I think she spent one night with me, maybe my oldest and my youngest, but I think that whole time I was in that place, other than that one night I don't think anyone ever, um, there was a very lonely period in my time, life, I don't think anyone ever spent the night other than maybe one night.

As a true crime fan, I know that someone who goes out of their way to provide extra-complete, extra-helpful information that has nothing to do with the question is lying.

At 11:12, Kelly comments, "[Merchant and Sadow] very clearly had these records when they were asking Fanny and Nathan questions last Friday, and now, knowing what we know from this affadavit and these phone records,it's very interesting to watch the testimony, becuase Nathan knows, Fanny knows, they know what the truth is, and watch them dance on these questions." At 11:46:

Mr Sadow: Can you give us an approximation of how many times Mr Wade visited you at the condo between the time you moved in and prior to November 1 of [2021]?

Ms Willis: I don't think often, but I don't want to speculate.

Mr Sadow: Can we say more than five? More than ten?

Ms Willis: I'm gonna tell you the problem I'm having here. Let's ay more than ten, but I'm not sure that's even accurate . . . I don't remember him being in that condo a lot.

At 12:57:

Mr Sadow: Your answer is, yes, prior to November 1 of 2021, you would have gone to the Hapeville condo and been there with Ms Willis, correct?

Mr Wade: Yes.

Mr Sadow: And you would have been there, as you indicated, for many reasons, right?

Mr Wade: Yes.

Mr Sadow: Can you give me, just list a few of the reasons.

Mr Wade: Ms Yeartie resided there, went to visit her, um, maybe went to talk about, uh, a document that I received, um --

Mr Sadow: You would go to the condo to talk about a document that you received?

Mr Wade: Absolutely.

Mr Sadow: Any other reasons?

Mr Wade: None come to mind.

Mr Sadlow: None come to mind.

Mr Wade No sir.

Mr Sadow: And would you say that was frequent? When I say "frequent", do you think prior to November 1 of 2021, you were at the condo more than ten times?

Mr Wade: No sir.

Mr Sadow: So it would be less than ten times.

Mr Wade: Yes sir

Mr Sadow: So if phone records were to reflect that you were making phone calls from the same location as the condo, before November 1 of 2021, and it was on multiple occasions, the phone records would be wrong?

Mr Wade: If phone records reflected that, yes sir.

Mr Sadow: They'd be wrong.

Mr Wade: They'd be wrong.

In hindsight, given these specific lines of questioning from both Ms Merchant and Mr Sadow, it's clear that they both were aware of the Mittelstadt geofencing evidence prior to last week's hearing and were basing their questions on it. In fact, it'ss hard to avoid thinking both Willis and Wade had some sense that the defense had evidence that contradicted their tesimony, whether it was from Ms Yeartie, Mr Bradley, or some other source like phone records, which Mr Sadow mentioned specifically in his questions to Mr Wade.

I can't avoid thinking more is going on behind the scenes. But as of yesterday,

A Fulton County judge will hear arguments on March 1 over efforts to disqualify District Attorney Fani Willis from Georgia's 2020 election interference case against former President Trump.

In addition,

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.

So far, McAfee hasn't been ruling in favor of the DA's office. We'll have to see what else comes out.

Trump Is Working To Put The Lawfare Strategy Out Of Reach

It quietly got into the news yesterday that, although Judge McAfee had spoken vaguely last Friday about having closing arguments in the evidentiary hearing on DA Willis's disqualification possibly today, this has been postponed:

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office has confirmed no closing summations will be held this week in her disqualification hearing regarding her historic prosecution of the nation’s 45th president.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee is currently deciding whether Willis and her special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, should be disqualified from further participating in their indictment of former President Donald Trump.

While many observers would like to see Willis get her comeuppance, the best we can say is this will take a while. In the video just above, Jordan Sekulow of the American Center for Law & Justice says, starting at 2:14,

[Judge McAfee]'s going to admit closing arguments. This is not normal. Something that we definitely thought would be done by this week is now going to go into a full third week. . . . Is it unprecedented to go into Week 3?

His interlocutor, a former federal prosecutor whose name I couldn't decipher, answers,

I think it is, when you're talking about a disqualification of a prosecutor from pursuing their duties, to criminally prosecute crimes in Fulton County or anywhere, you would think that something like this would be decided rather quickly. You put up your evidence, and within hours, the other side puts up their evidence as to why the DA should stay in the case, and the judge usually makes a ruling, either from the bench or within a day or two. But this has just strung on and on, and it's because Trump is involved, and it changes the complexion of everything.

He continues at 13:45:

The longer he takes, the more I think that shows that he's gonna disqualify her, because he's really gonna have to justify in a lengthy legal written opinion as to why -- and then of course, Jordan, each side is going to be entitled to ask the judge for a certificate of immediate review. . . . The losing side can say, "Judge, let this thing be decided by the court of appeals. . . . The judge doesn't have to give a certificate of immediate review, but Judge McAfee is going to be happy to get it out of his court.

He concludes at 14:45:

I don't think the case is going to be tried this year, because if the court of appeals were to decide to take the case, then they would have another briefing schedule, then they would have the possibility of oral argument before a three-judge panel of the Georgia Court of Appeals, and it would go on and on and on, and you know what, Jordan, in addition, the losing side could seek certiorari to the Georgia State Supreme Court. . . . So the idea of the defense, and I think they're doing it brilliantly, is to drag it out. Drag it out forever.

But this is just the Fulton County RICO case. Trump has already taken a presidential immunity claim in the January 6 case with Judge Chutkan to the US Supreme Court, and he's now going to raise it in the classified documents case as well:

Donald Trump’s attorneys said late Thursday that the former president should never have been charged in Florida with illegally retaining classified materials because he designated them as personal documents before leaving office — and thus should be shielded from prosecution by presidential immunity.

It is the second time Trump has tried to avoid a federal criminal trial with the sweeping argument that he cannot be prosecuted for actions that occurred while he was president. A judge and an appeals court panel have rejected that claim in his Washington, D.C., trial for allegedly obstructing the 2020 election results, but Trump has asked the Supreme Court to intervene.

The Supreme Court’s decision could settle the question of presidential immunity in both the D.C. and Florida cases.

The immunity court filing Thursday night was one of least a half dozen requests by Trump’s attorneys in Florida to toss out the 40-count indictment, which accuses Trump of mishandling classified papers after he left office and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them. Trump has pleaded not guilty.

However, Trump has also moved that Jack Smith was improperly appointed as special prosecutor:

Former President Donald Trump has argued that Special Counsel Jack Smith was improperly appointed to the position while trying to dismiss the classified documents case.

Trump's lawyers filed a series of motions on Thursday attempting to throw out the federal case. The former president has pleaded not guilty to 40 charges over allegations he illegally retained classified materials after he left office in January 2021, then obstructed the federal attempt to retrieve them.

. . . One of the filings also argued that Attorney General Merrick Garland's appointment of Smith in November 2022 was unlawful as it was not first approved by the Senate. This is required by the Appointments Clause and the Appropriations Clause; a previous argument had raised the "serious problem," the filing added.

These filings increase the likelihood that neither federal case against Trump can come to trial before the election, now less than nine months away. But a felony conviction for Trump before the election has been a keynote both of the White House lawfare strategy, and increasingly a last-ditch justification for Nikki Haley's campaign:

Nikki Haley’s recent comments suggest that she sees a sweet spot for her campaign as former President Donald Trump’s legal drama intensifies – and potentially results in a criminal conviction – in the coming months.

. . . While Haley predicts that support for Trump will drop off in the coming months as he spends more time in the courtroom, she has also made the case that voters will not support Trump if he is criminally convicted.

“There is no way that the American people are going to vote for a convicted criminal. They’re not,” Haley said last week in an interview with NBC News. Trump has pleaded not guilty in all the cases against him.

Haley has long said that Trump would not be able to focus on a general election or beat President Joe Biden in large part because he is going to be spending so much time in court. Now she is also making the case that support for him could wane even before the GOP convention.

The problem is that Trump's counter strategy will simply be to delay the proceedings for a mere matter of months, which also covers the US Supreme Court's summer recess from late June/early July until the first Monday in October, which subtracts another three months from the schedule. Trump's current motions hope to get the court to take his appeals, but simply waiting for the court to decide whether or not to hear them is a problem for the prosecution, which has repeatedly claimed that it's urgent that they go to trial before the election.

It's puzzling that nobdy in the White House seems to have anticipated that Trump's attorneys would seek to delay any trials, since this strategy has been characterized as "criminal defense 101", instead waiting until 2023 even to issue indictments.