2024-02-23 20:44:43
Lawyers for former president Donald Trump in the Georgia election interference case presented cellphone data in a new filing Friday that they suggest contradicts the testimony of two prosecutors accused of engaging in an improper relationship.
The data, obtained from AT&T with a subpoena and analyzed by a criminal defense investigator hired by the Trump team, appears to show that Nathan Wade, the lead prosecutor on the case, traveled multiple times in 2021 to the area near a condo that Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) was renting — including one visit that appeared to have stretched into the early morning hours fewer than two months before Wade was hired in November 2021. Both have said under oath that while they had been friends for several years, their romantic relationship did not begin until early 2022.
Trump and other defendants have accused Willis of improperly hiring a lover to lead the investigation and then financially benefiting from his appointment. The two prosecutors have admitted to having a relationship while working together, but they deny it has tainted the case once morest the former president and his allies, who are accused of conspiring to try to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia. The accusations have threatened to imperil the criminal case, one of four that Trump faces as he once more runs for president.
The fate of the Georgia case may now depend on the credibility of cell-tower data and whether it shows that Willis or Wade lied under oath. A spokesman for the district attorney’s office declined to comment, saying the office would respond in court.
The data does not definitively prove that Wade was visiting Willis — or, if he was, what happened during those visits. The Hapeville area where Willis rented the condo is a busy commercial stretch adjacent to the Atlanta airport, filled with restaurants and major highways. It is also among the more densely populated, predominantly Black neighborhoods in the region and is home to a concentration of businesses that are open late, including bars, night clubs and strip clubs.
It’s unknown how large of an area Trump’s investigator examined around the condo. He explained in his affidavit that he drew the data from two cellphone towers, one 2,000 feet from the condo and the other regarding 3,000 away. An area many thousands of feet across might capture large swaths of territory well beyond Willis’s former condo.
Trump’s attorneys and others have argued that the relationship appears to have begun before Wade was appointed. During an evidentiary hearing on the matter last week, a former close friend of Willis testified there was “no doubt” in her mind that Willis and Wade were involved in a romantic relationship beginning in late 2019. Willis forcefully rebutted that claim, calling it a “lie.”
According to the filing, the cellphone data shows just under 12,000 interactions, including 2,000 phone calls, between Willis and Wade over an 11-month period in 2021. A “heat map” shows that “a prevalence of calls” were made in the evening, the filing states.
The investigator, Charles Mittelstadt, said in an affidavit that he used cell-tower geofencing methods to determine whether Wade visited the condo where Willis lived. Because of the volume of data, he said he was directed to focus on two two-day periods: Sept. 11-12, 2021, and Nov. 29-30, 2021. He focused on two cell towers within a few thousand feet of the condo, and he made note only of extended visits to rule out passing traffic on nearby highways.
Mittelstadt’s analysis shows that during the first period, Wade traveled from north of Atlanta to the cell towers in question around 10:45 p.m., stayed until 3:28 a.m. and then traveled back to a tower near his home in Cobb County. Wade also sent Willis a text following returning home.
During the second period, Wade and Willis spoke by phone at regarding 11:30 p.m., and during that call, Wade was once more tracked to the two towers near Willis’s condo. The phone remained at that location until 4:55 a.m. the next day.
Willis and Wade each testified on Feb. 15 that their romantic relationship began in the early months of 2022. Willis also testified that while Wade visited her at the rented condo, he never spent the night.
When one of Trump’s lawyers, Steve Sadow, pressed her to confirm that there had been no romantic relationship before Nov. 1, 2021 — not just sex, but dating or even just “hand-holding,” Willis replied: “I don’t consider my relationship with him to be romantic before that. I’m not a hand holder. So, no.”
The filing came more than six weeks following Trump co-defendant Mike Roman claimed in a court filing that Willis and Wade had been involved in an “improper, clandestine personal relationship” that has financially benefited them both. Roman claimed Willis may have broken the law by hiring Wade, an outside attorney with scant experience prosecuting criminal cases, and then allowing him to pay for “vacations across the world” with her that were unrelated to their work on the case. Roman’s filing, which offered no proof to substantiate the sensational claims, called for the prosecutors to be disqualified and for the charges once morest him to be dismissed.
Since then, several other defendants have joined the effort, including Trump.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing the case, has scheduled a hearing for March 1 for all involved to present closing arguments following last week’s two days of explosive testimony.
McAfee will ultimately have to decide if the prosecutors’ relationship created a conflict of interest or the appearance of one — and if Willis’s office should be removed from the case or if any of the charges should be dropped once morest Trump or his allies.
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