Willis and Wade have acknowledged a romantic relationship however have insisted beneath oath that it started solely after Willis employed Wade in November 2021. They’ve denied any wrongdoing.
Legal professionals for Trump and his co-defendants
had signaled that Bradley would testify that Willis and Wade turned romantically concerned earlier than Willis employed him. If Bradley had testified to that, it could have strengthened the bid to disqualify the prosecutors and would have opened Willis and Wade as much as accusations that they lied to the decide.
Bradley, nonetheless, mentioned he couldn’t recall when he discovered of the romantic relationship between Willis and Wade, and he claimed to have had solely a single dialog in regards to the relationship with Wade.
Within the listening to, Ashleigh Service provider, a lawyer for one in every of Trump’s co-defendants, learn textual content messages Bradley despatched her saying the prosecutors’ relationship started earlier than Wade joined Willis’ group. However Bradley — who was pressured to take the stand resulting from a subpoena and acknowledged that he didn’t wish to be testifying — wouldn’t stand by his textual content messages. As a substitute, he insisted that he was merely speculating in these texts. And he mentioned he had no reminiscence of ever understanding when precisely they struck up a romance.
The Trump-allied legal professionals — notably Steve Sadow, who represents the previous president — laid into Bradley. However he didn’t budge.
“You need the court docket to imagine that as an alternative of claiming nothing, you determined by yourself to invest?” Sadow requested.
“Sure, I speculated,” Bradley replied.
And Richard Rice, who represents one other co-defendant, pressed Bradley on whether or not he lied about Wade when he communicated with Service provider. Rice famous that Bradley had described Wade as a buddy.
“As a standard course of relationships with your mates, do you cross on lies about your mates?” Rice requested. “Is that one thing you usually do, Mr. Bradley? Do you inform lies about your mates?”
“Have I advised lies about my mates?” Bradley replied. “I might have, I don’t know.”
Tuesday’s testimony from Bradley was a continuation of a dramatic evidentiary listening to that started earlier this month and featured testimony by each Willis and Wade themselves. Decide Scott McAfee has requested the legal professionals to current authorized arguments on the disqualification effort this Friday, with a ruling anticipated after that.