Fani’s text mess
New look at exchanges refuting DA's love story
A trove of damning text messages from Nathan Wade’s former divorce lawyer seemingly showing his affair with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis started before they claim it did has finally emerged.
The text exchanges between Terrence Bradley and Ashleigh Merchant — who is representing one of former President Donald Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia election-fraud case — were revealed in full for the first time on Megyn Kelly’s podcast Wednesday.
“We have gotten our hands on the texts,” Kelly said in opening her show, referring to the 413message exchange.
“The admissions by Nathan Wade’s friend and former law partner that they did not want you to see,” she added.
In the texts, Bradley calls Willis and Wade “arrogant as ‘F’” and says Merchant is his friend and that he trusts her.
“Do you think [the affair] started before she hired him?” Merchant, representing co-defendant Mark Roman, texted Bradley in early January.
“Absolutely,” Bradley responded. “It started when she left the DA’s office and was judge in South Fulton.”
Willis was a judge in South Fulton in 2019, according to a Time magazine report.
When confronted with these messages Tuesday while being grilled on the stand about Willis and Wade’s relationship, Bradley had muttered, “Oh, dang.”
However, he spent the rest of the hearing incredibly claiming not to remember basic details about when his former law partner and Willis met and started dating, and he tried to explain away his messages as mere speculation.
She and Wade have testified that they got together in 2022 and broke up a year later. Merchant and lawyers for Trump have been submitting evidence to show they were actually together much earlier than that.
When asked about a list of other people, including some who worked in the Fulton County DA’s Office with Willis who would know about the relationship, Bradley responded: “Subpoena them all.”
They’ll ‘deny it’
Part of the allegations against Willis include that she financially benefited from appointing Wade to the plum role in the Trump case, notably when he paid for her to go on trips with him using cash earned on the job.
Bradley seemed to be aware of these excursions, texting to Merchant: “They took many trips to Florida . . . Texas . . . California.”
Seemingly aware of this travel, Merchant replied, “And Napa.”
Willis and Wade traveled to California when the district attorney’s daughter “flunked out” of college and moved to the state, Bradley added.
“Dang,” Merchant wrote back. “They had a full on relationship.”
Merchant subsequently vowed she would protect Bradley’s identity in the motion she was then about to file, which claimed that Willis and Wade’s relationship represented a conflict of interest in the election-fraud case.
When she asked how Willis and Wade would respond, Bradley suggested that the pair would “deny it” but would not attack Merchant.
Despite his cavalier tone in the text messages, Bradley on Tuesday appeared uncomfortable and tried to backtrack on several of his prior comments.
Closing arguments in the hearing to determine whether Willis can stay on the case will be heard on Friday.
After that, it will be up to Judge Scott McAfee to make a ruling.
It remains unclear how much weight will be given to the messages versus what Bradley said in court.