Donald Trump’s Fulton County Jail mug shot by Fulton County Prosecutor Fani Willis (AP Photo/John Bazemore, File)
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has released a recent video that she says shows a series of cell phone conversations between her and the special prosecutor overseeing the RICO case against former President Donald Trump. asked the judge to ignore the court filing.
Early Friday morning, President Trump’s attorney Stephen Sadow said the special counsel had been working on Willis since before 2021, when special counsel Nathan Wade was hired to handle the case, long before Willis was arrested. They submitted supplemental evidence purportedly based on analysis of cell phone records showing physical proximity. He and Wade testified that their relationship began.
Late Friday, Willis tried to trash the filing, saying it violates the court’s standing orders, the Georgia Rules of Evidence and U.S. Supreme Court precedent regarding the admission of evidence in the case.
“The court’s standing case management orders for criminal cases require that a party ambush opposing counsel with purported expert evidence, review the evidence, review purported expert reports and qualifications, and review the expert’s own reports and qualifications. “It is specifically intended to prevent opposing counsel from being denied a meaningful opportunity to obtain expert knowledge,” the state’s rebuttal reads. “Courts now allow Trump defendants to circumvent this protective process in other cases where they have excluded expert evidence that parties have failed to comply with standing case management orders in criminal cases. I can’t.”
In Trump’s filing, investigator Charles Mittelstadt said AT&T records show “more than 2,000 voice calls” and “10,000 voice calls” between Wade and Willis over an 11-month period in 2021. It claims to have uncovered “just under 2,000 communications.”
Investigators hired by Trump’s lawyers also said the data showed “special location data” on Wade’s cell phone number on two early morning days in September and November 2021, and that Wade It claims that this shows that he was in the vicinity of Mr Willis’ address.
On November 1, 2021, Wade was hired to handle RICO cases. However, Willis and Wade both testified (and asserted in court documents) that their relationship didn’t become romantic until 2022.
The legal team, led by an attorney representing co-defendant Michael Roman, who was a Trump 2020 staffer, said Willis appointed Wade and later provided him with gifts, such as vacations and gifts at various destinations during his travels. He claimed to have received some financial benefit in the form of dinners, excursions, etc. and other purchases. On the contrary, the prosecution claims that the travel expenses are divided almost equally.
The paper evidence supporting the state’s claim that Willis reimbursed Wade is very thin, and certainly almost nonexistent. But the basic facts of the relationship and when it began are also key to the judge’s final decision as to whether the prosecutor and his office and the entire prosecution team should be removed from the case.
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Trump’s filing states that “Mittelstadt, the author of Exhibit 38, may testify at the convenience of the court,” which would take advantage of the recent hearings surrounding the Wade Willis relationship. That is.
In its dissent, the district attorney’s office disputes Mittelstadt’s suggestion that Wade was calling Willis late at night.
The bolded and underlined sections of the latest filing read:
This record does not in any way prove the content of the communications between Special Counsel Wade and District Attorney Willis. It does not prove that Special Counsel Wade was at a particular location or address. They do not prove that Special Prosecutor Wade and District Attorney Willis were in the same location during the times described in Supplemental Exhibit 38. And, in fact, the evidence clearly establishes that District Attorney Willis was elsewhere at various relevant dates and times, including working and meeting with the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office. [sic] Three crime scenes where mass murders were motivated by racial and gender bias.
Willis previously called efforts to remove her from the case “ridiculous” and said they reflected a “fundamental misunderstanding” of “rudimentary” rules. Still, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee said the issues raised by the defense were serious and could merit disqualification.
The state’s late Friday salvo focused primarily on evidentiary issues, arguing that Trump’s application fails to meet numerous obligations under court, state and constitutional procedural rules regarding the production of evidence. There is. Willis argues that judges should not consider Mittelstadt’s data when ruling on disqualification claims.
The state’s objections conclude with some thought about where Wade’s cell phone data came from.
“Additionally, the state questions whether Trump lawfully obtained the cell phone site’s location information, which is typically only available after probable cause is established and a search warrant is issued. ” the district attorney’s office wrote.
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