The Megyn Kelly Show - BONUS: Ashleigh Merchant Tells All About Fani Willis Affair Details, and How Judge Will Rule, with Phil Holloway | Ep. 740

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

Megyn Kelly is joined by Phil Holloway, founder of Holloway Law Group, to discuss Ashleigh Merchant testifying before the Georgia state senate today, revealing how she stumbled on the Fani Willis - Nathan Wade affair thanks to Terrance Bradley, new details exposed by her comments, why Fani Willis could be charged with a felony if it is found that she lied under oath, whether an investigation into her may already be underway, the curious way Wade billed his time, and more. Then Megyn and Phil take viewer questions about the Fani Willis case about Judge Scott McAfee's temperament, and Nathan Wade's ex-wife, plus the implications in Georgia if the judge finds that Willis lied on the stand.Holloway- https://twitter.com/PhilHollowayEsq Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly and welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We have a bonus episode for you today because there was explosive testimony from lawyer Ashley Merchant in front of the Georgia State Senate today. Updates to this story continue flowing in, even as Judge Scott McAfee continues weighing his decision this week. We've got it all covered. There were developments and there are rumors about this judge we're going to get to as well. Back with me now, Phil Holloway of Holloway Law Group in Cobb County, Georgia. Phil, great to see you. So I did watch all but the last hour of Ashley Merchant's testimony before the Georgia State Senate committee today because I had to get on the air.

So I saw all of sort of what I'd call the direct examination by a more friendly inquisitor. And then came somebody who was more fanny friendly and, uh, so to say, so to say, and, uh, he gave her a little bit more of a hard time, I think on whether they've really shown a conflict of interest and so on, but let's start back with those first three hours. And I know you watched the whole first thing. My overall impression was Ashley merchant is number one, very clearly a truth teller. And one of the biggest things I learned was a lot of people thought, like, how did she get onto this? Did Nathan Wade's ex-wife call her and let her know about? No, it was Terrence Bradley who first turned her onto this whole story. The same guy with

all the memory problems the other day, he's patient zero in this whole matter. Yeah, great to be with you again. This is really like drinking from a fire hose, trying to consume all of this information and digest it. But fortunately, a lot of what we heard today was not entirely unexpected. I, for example, had a pretty good idea that they were going to get into much more than the text messages. The text messages are just sort of a snippet of all of this. We know that there's conversations that Ashley has had with Terrence Bradley, and she talked about some of those today. In fact, she let us know that this whole thing with him began when they happened to be in the same

courtroom at the same time with cases on the same calendar. And they're just chit-chatting the way lawyers, the way we do when we're all in court. And apparently she started just, you know, taking notes, you know, and asking follow-up questions. And the conversation began sort of ongoing with Terrence over some period of time. But she really did, I think, a very good job of being responsive. We saw what a witness looks like who actually answers questions and who doesn't prevaricate and who actually says, look, this is the response to your question. And I've got a little bit more to explain. So she was, I think, very, very thorough, obviously very well prepared.

She knows this information like the back of her hand. And the Senate committee today did a lot more, I think, in terms of advancing the public discussion and the information that we all have about this than we've gotten in a lot of these court hearings. So really, we had a really, really good hearing today. And I think there may be additional information yet to come, but it was quite illuminating, to good hearing today. And I think there may be additional information yet to come, but it was quite illuminating, to say the least. We're going to play some soundbites, but what are they trying to do, Phil? What is the goal of this committee? What power do they have to affect what change? Well, the committee let us know today that, you know, they were watching the

news just like the rest of us and they see what's going on. And that was really what inspired them to set up this committee within the Georgia Senate. And of course, the Senate, you know, they can't remove Fannie Willis. They can't sanction her. But what they can do is they can start the lawmaking process. They can rein in rogue prosecutors. The legislature can enact laws that tighten the rules about conflicts of interest. They can make it a crime, for example, if they wanted to, to use nepotism in terms of hiring your contractors. If you're a department head, so to speak, like a constitutional officer, such as a district

attorney or maybe a sheriff, they can do things that pertain to the ethics, the legal ethics that bind prosecutors. There's a lot that they can do, and they're going to figure out just what happened here in terms of prosecutorial misconduct, if there was any that they believe, that they can use their power as half of the legislature to effect change next time around. They're not going to be able to do anything this legislative session. It's too late. But you can mark my words. There will be change coming from the Georgia legislature next year. It's wonderful to hear an attorney on the case, be able to sit down and just answer

all the questions about what she did, why she did it, who she was speaking to, how she got stonewalled from the prosecutors right in the middle of the whole proceedings. That was part of the fun of just watching Ashley Merchant have a heart to heart with these guys. You mentioned how she kind of just described getting to know Terrence Bradley. She she I believe she said that she met him sort of in a side room off of a courtroom one day when they were all there taking somebody's plea. Somebody had a client who was a cop into a plea and they started chatting and he was no longer Nathan Wade's partner and maybe no longer his friend. That partnership ended in, she thought, August of 2023. And I wondered whether that was the year. I thought it was earlier than that. But in any event, she described how they started chit-chatting and he was a fountain of information.

Gone was the laconic man we saw on the stand last week who couldn't put two words together because he didn't remember them. Present, according to her, was this man who was just telling her in narrative form everything about this affair, how it began in 2019, right around there, and was hot and heavy straight through. Here's just a little bit of her talking about that in SOT 23. Mr. Bradley essentially went through the whole thing. He said that they met at a judicial conference before. He was very specific that it was before she became da because that was one of the things that he could he couldn't remember when the judicial conference was but he knew that it was before she became da and said that they had been they had been together they met at this conference nathan was still married um and he mr bradley was upset because

of what happened in the divorce he was upset because they were still married. You know, the ways were still married. And he essentially just left her after meeting Miss Willis and dropping the kids off at college. And I remember specifically him saying, you know, I handle my business, things like that, like, you know, that I don't leave my wife without alimony. And so he was telling me about the, um, the access cards, you know, that Mr. Wade had access cards telling me about the contracts, told me about their contract that they had, um, that Nathan had brought them the contract for the first appearance hearings. And ultimately that Nathan was hired as the attorney on this case, um, that they had been dating before. And he, I mean, he told me, you know, they met at hotels. Um, he would go to. And I remember him saying, you need to find her bestie who they had a falling out. That's the person whose condo it was.

It was fascinating, Phil. I mean, we heard a lot of that, well, saw a lot of that in the text messages that were released, right, that we have now in full. But to hear her say, you know, he volunteered all of this to her and not just to her, but now we know to two others who are willing to file affidavits and give testimony if the judge will reopen the hearing, that he told them too, two other lawyers, a DA and a private lawyer who had a defendant in this case who I think ultimately got dropped. Yeah, so it's important to remember, you know, Nathan, excuse me, Ashley Merchant and Terrence Bradley, they've been friends and colleagues for, you know, years, perhaps probably even decades, as long as I've been in this area over 20 years. So this is like just two friends having a casual conversation while they're waiting on their case to get called in court. And so what you see here is a description of Mr. Bradley just having a casual, friendly

conversation. She's, of course, taking notes. And then she goes about the business of corroborating it. You heard her go into great detail saying how she just didn't take his word for it. She didn't disbelieve him, but she did her homework. She looked to verify, you know, when did the city of South Fulton, Georgia, where Willis was the part-time judge, when did that city actually send her to this conference? And so she did her homework to confirm these things. But look, it wasn't just Ashley Merchant that was hearing all this. It was the chief assistant district attorney in Cobb County, Georgia, where my office is, Cindy Yeager, who has this week had her testimony

proffered where she says, no, I watched this hearing in court. I saw the testimony and I have a different story. This was told to me differently and I need to set the record straight. And now we also have Manny Aurora, who represented before there was a plea, another co-defendant in the case who also had conversations. And so what we're starting to see, the dam is breaking, Megan. And we have person after person after person coming forward to say there is a fraud being perpetrated on the court. Bonnie Willis is not telling the truth. We now have a filing as of yesterday. I think Donald Trump's legal team has literally said that

Fannie Willis and her team is perpetrating a fraud on the court. That is a separate basis that independent of any other conflict of interest, that's a separate basis. And I agree for her to be disqualified from the case. If we don't have prosecutors playing by the rules, playing fairly, doing what justice and the law requires, then our system does not work. It's as important as the right to be presumed innocent, and it's the right to a jury and the right to a lawyer. You've got a right to have a prosecutor that doesn't lie to the court, that doesn't go to these extreme lengths to perpetrate a fraud on the court just to get somebody, okay? That's not how the system works.

That's not what it was designed to do. And if we don't have that, we don't have fairness. And if we don't have fundamental fairness, the constitutional requirements have not been met. The case should be dismissed. But Judge McAfee seemed to be questioning the lawyers at the day of the closing arguments on this hearing, saying, well, there's a difference between what Terrence Bradley said to Ashley Merchant in these texts

and knowing that he seemed to be open-minded. That was my assessment to the notion that Bradley was just speculating in these texts. And if that's what the judge's conclusion, then he can dismiss the texts. he can dismiss the texts. He can dismiss the two additional lawyer affidavits that you just mentioned, because all three of those, the texts and those two additional lawyers are all saying the same thing. Terrence Bradley told me it began long before 2022. And the judge seemed to be really wanting to know, is that Terrence Bradley's speculation or did he actually know there's been no proof that he knew? And I mean, they tried at that hearing to point

out, he said, absolutely. I believe it began. The question was, do you believe, do you think it began prior to when she hired him? And he said, absolutely. And the state said, well, that could be absolutely. I think so. I think so. But then he volunteered on his own. This is exactly when it began, after she left the DA's office when she was a more junior person and went on to become a municipal court judge. He had an actual time on it. And if you look at the whole text message strain, it shows he had all sorts of ideas about how she could prove it. Anyway, all that's a long-winded way of saying, I'm not sure the judge believes that they've established Terrence Bradley had

personal knowledge when he was blabbing to all these people. Well, it's interesting that none of the witnesses and none of the text messages, none of the proffered testimony that we've seen, in no place do we see anybody say that he said he was speculating. Every single one of them brings forth information basically to make the point that, no, he was absolutely sure and he went into great detail. And if he didn't have personal knowledge, he wouldn't be able to say it in this way. If the judge, and I don't presume to know what's in his head, but reading the tea leaves, my take at this point is that if he's going to rule against the defendants who have brought this motion to disqualify, he probably will reopen the evidence before he does that to

allow them to offer some of this other testimony. We've not even heard testimony about the cell phone location data. So he suggested that he might, he suggested that he might have enough to make a ruling based on what he's heard. And remember, he can rely on Robin Yurdy. We know that Robin Yurdy has personal information that she testified to under oath that the affair began much earlier. That is consistent with everything that these witnesses are saying that Bradley has told them over the last many, many months. And she was dragged there. That's the other thing, Phyllis. She did not want to be there. She got dragged there against her will. She complied with the subpoena. But that's even more to her credit that she was a reluctant witness. She wasn't trying to burn or settle any scores with Fannie Willis. She didn't even want to go. If she wanted to settle

scores with Fannie Willis, she would have been like, how soon can I show up? I'll be your lead witness. Keep me up there for two hours. I can go on. That's not what we saw. And the judge knows how to assess credibility the same as you or I. So Ashley Merchant made another point today that I thought was very strong and I was waiting for her to make it. And you and I have discussed it too. I mean, I was saying the same thing. You know, if you have seen in my, my executive producer, Steve Krakauer, if somebody said, did you have a was saying to my executive producer, Steve Krakauer, if somebody said, do you have an affair with Steve Krakauer? Like he came over to your house a lot.

I'd be like, no. And there's a lot of text messages between the two of you. And I'd say, take a look at them. Here's what they say. Get me that soundbite. Get me the other one. Why wasn't that done on time? That's what our, why haven't these two, if they're so innocent,

shown the judge their texts from their their some 10,000 texts from 2021 when they claim they weren't having an affair. But all the cell phone data shows him texting and calling and going over to her house in the wee hours of the evening. Here is Ashley Merchant on that and stop 22. You ever look at his calendar? Did you have access to that to see if it matched up? No, I didn't have access to his calendar, and I didn't have access to their text messages. I mean, I was able to get his geolocation data through subpoena, but the one thing that really struck me is if I was accused of something and I was saying I didn't do it, I would download my phone.

They have a system. It's called Celebrate. And Fulton County pays for it. City of Atlanta pays for it. It's literally a system that you can hook your phone into. I hook your phone up and it can find deleted text. It can find everything. And you can limit it.

You can say, I only want texts with this person. So, you know, if I was being accused of having an affair with someone and I said it didn't start until April and someone else said it started in October, the easiest thing to do is to, you know, download that phone. So apparently, I mean, she made a good point about how this is a very sophisticated technology that you can limit it. You don't have to disclose all of your texts, like between you and your kid or whatever. You can say just the two of us and just on this subject. And then you can screen so that there's nothing really personal being divulged. And that the DA's office has it, Phil.. They've got their own criminal investigators. They have self-right. They said so in court. We know, look, we know why Willis has not released her text messages with Nathan Wade. We know that because it would show that the affair did in fact begin before they have testified to in court. That's why, in my opinion, she has not released

it because it proves that she's guilty as Team Trump and Ashley Merchant have accused her of being of lying to the court. So she really, at this point, can't do it. And I think the point that Ashley Merchant made in this hearing was important for people to understand. We defense lawyers, we can't go get search warrants. If the cops think that you and Steve are having the affair that you were talking about and that there's some kind of a crime, they can get a search warrant and they can take your phone, they can plug it into the cellbrite system and they can get your text messages. Criminal defense lawyers cannot do that.

So the idea that they can somehow use the subpoena process, it just doesn't work that way. Fannie Willis is the only person, or Nathan Wade, who can clear this up, and that would require them to come to court, to tell the truth, to let their text messages and all the other communications be revealed to the public. If they can do that, and they can show that they were not lying, then great, that will settle it. But I think the fact that they are going to these great lengths, I mean, they will move mountains to keep this information from coming out, not only in court, but in the public sphere of discussion. They don't want any of this out. Why? Because I believe that it shows they're

lying. And if they have lied to the court about this, what else are they lying about? This cuts to the heart of fundamental fairness, due process. I think the judge has no real choice but to grant the motion. I feel that the evidence is, at this point, it's overwhelming. If he reopens the evidence, that should suggest to us that maybe he's thinking about denying it. But the fact that he has not yet reopened it tells me that he may very well be leaning towards, at a minimum, disqualifying Team Willis. And if she does that, then the case is essentially over. He may not go so far as to dismiss the indictment. He may leave that to any potential successor prosecutor if they can find one to take this case. But at a minimum, I think he's leaning, Megan, towards disqualifying the whole team. I don't really see he has much choice in

the matter. People don't. I mean, maybe they do know, but I practiced law for 10 years. I was at a lovely, very, very successful law firm. You've got a very successful law practice. It is extremely unusual for lawyers who are this prominent to be out there openly lying to the court in any context, nevermind under oath. You know, I can't tell you the number of conversations we'd have behind closed doors, you know, where somebody was like, Oh, it's a bad document. You know, like, what are we going to do with that? Well, we're going to produce it to the other side. You want, you want to give up your law license for this client? You want to, you want to cash

in your law license and all the hard work that you've done and your ethics and your moral code for this one client? No, we, you have a higher obligation as a lawyer and everyone knows that it's like the people who violate that in terms of the ethics and the candor owed to the court are bottom feeder, loser, ambulance chasing lawyers in the middle of nowhere who get outed as unethical pretty quickly in the system, in my experience. So to see the district attorney and Nathan Wade, who, as I understand, was relatively well known and fairly respected in this jurisdiction, thing after thing after thing, he definitely lied in his interrogatory answers in his divorce case

that we know. And what I believe is repeated lies in this case, too, while under oath. It's extraordinary. Here is Ashley Merchant being asked by the Georgia Senate. What does all of this mean? If they if they lied, what do we have here? It's SOT 24. What are the consequences for an attorney to give sworn testimony that she did? If you're Bradley, what is it, Yerke? Yerty. Yerty, your trackhawk data, your other independent verifications are found to be truthful. It's a crime. It's a felony. You'd lose your license. It's a crime. It's a felony.

You'd lose your license. It's perjury. Same for Wade. Yes. Boom, right there. So what fell happens there? Well, let's say this judge says, you know, I disqualify them because I don't think they told the court the truth.

He doesn't get to disbar. He doesn't get to do any of that other stuff. So what what would happen then? Well, I'm glad you played that specific side because that was exactly the point of her testimony that I wanted to get to. If if what she's saying bears out to be true, that there was perjury that was done, that there was other. And by the way, it is a crime in Georgia. If you're an elected official to violate your oath of office. It's a felony offense. It carries up to five years in prison. Perjury is also a felony. You can get

disbarred for lying to the court. You can get disbarred for committing felonies. And can I read to you, if I have just a moment, the oath of office that Fannie Willis had to take? It says, I do swear that I will faithfully and impartially, without fear, favor, or affection, discharge my duties as district attorney, and I will take only my lawful compensation, so help me God. And so if she lies to the judge under oath, how can you say that she has faithfully and impartially, impartially, without fear or favor favor discharge her duties i just don't see that so i'm wondering if the senate committee among the legislative changes that they may be getting to i'm wondering if they're not gearing up to make a criminal referral perhaps to the

georgia attorney general uh because there needs to be and we've talked about this because if there's a criminal just to jump in quickly phil if there's a criminal, and we've talked about this, there needs to be independent investigation. If there's a criminal referral, now we are going to be able to see the texts between the two of them. Yeah, because they would be able to access their cell phones. And we know that unless they throw them in the Chattahoochee River here in Atlanta, even if they're deleted, the law enforcement can still get them. So the attorney general, theoretically, if he wanted to look into this, he could get the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to open up a criminal

investigation to investigate whether there was the felony offense of perjury, whether there's the felony offense of violation of oath of office or anything else. And I would not at all be surprised if that's not one of the things we see from the Senate committee when it wraps up its business. We won't know until next year what legislative changes they might be able to get, but they can make a criminal referral pretty easily. And then it, of course, will be up to the attorney general. But I'm at the point where I'm wondering if maybe that hasn't already happened. We just don't know if the attorney general is looking into this, but it could already

be underway. I think that regardless of whether the AG gets involved, somebody, whether it's the Senate, I don't think they're exactly the right entity, but we need a full and complete independent investigation beyond what these lawyers are able to do with their limited means as attorneys. We need somebody with full subpoena power, with full ability to get search warrants, to be able to get to the bottom of all of this because the integrity of the system depends on it. And the judge has an obligation, in my view, to make sure that the system works, that the integrity of the system is maintained by all parties, whether it's the defense lawyers or even the district attorney. And if he fails to do that, he's not doing his job. So I think that it's incumbent upon him to make sure that one way or another, we get to the truth. That's the thing, Phil, because you and I both know there are often bad facts for your

client that you would love to not air, right? That you would love to just don't produce the document or don't answer the interrogatory completely honestly. You don't do it. And why is that? Because ethics are a part, a fundamental important part of being a lawyer. You either are going to be ethical or you're not. And if you're not, you are not going to be an attorney. Not for long. They're going to catch you. It's built right in there. You learn it in law school ethics. There's a section on the bar exam about ethics. You have to pass an ethical screening in order to actually get sworn into the bar because so much of it does depend on attorneys and their duty of candor to

the court. You can hide things. You can lie if you want. If you're unethical, you can choose to go that way and it would upend the whole system. So it's not just like, hey, it's office gossip. Maybe I didn't tell the truth about my affair. This whole thing has a much higher bar and more severe consequences and implications than that, which is why I'm glad all these other authorities are looking. The AG should be looking into this, even if, let's say, best case for Fannie, and she can show the legal standard is actual conflict of interest, not just appearance, and that the burden of proof is much, much higher than preponderance of the evidence,

which is what she's arguing in her latest motion. She wants clear and convincing, which is a much higher standard. And somehow she convinces Judge McAfee to do all that. And he says, OK, there's a lot of smoke. They couldn't prove fire. I can't DQ her. That can't be the end of the matter. No. And think about this. Now we've got the proffered testimony of Cindy Yeager, who is the chief assistant DA in neighboring Cobb County. Among other things, she says that she has personal knowledge that Fannie Willis herself called Terrence Bradley. She heard that, you know, at least half the conversation, and she says she's got enough to know that it was Willis on the other end stating,

because she, I guess, recognized her voice saying, you know, they're on to us, you know, shut up. Don't, and I'm paraphrasing, but she basically is, is now saying that Willis has told Bradley, you know, keep your mouth shut. There's no need to talk about us. There's no need to talk about the things that you know. Is that the impartial and fair administration of justice? I think not. And if she is going that far to the point of tampering with a witness, that could also be a crime. It's called influencing a witness. And if it was done corruptly and with corrupt motives, that's a felony offense in Georgia. Not to mention the fact that we now have a waiter on the nearby Marietta Square at a restaurant who says that he saw Mr. Wade talking to Mr. Bradley within the last few weeks, despite testimony to the contrary,

what we're beginning to see a picture of is something very, very deceitful, very dishonest, and very corrupt in the way that this case is being prosecuted, the way that it's being maintained, and the way that the justice system, quite frankly, is being administered in Fulton County. And it really needs to be investigated and cleaned up because if those things are true, then something is very, very rotten in Denmark. I'm Megyn Kelly, host of The Megyn Kelly Show on SiriusXM.

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Go to SiriusXM.com slash MK show to subscribe and get three months free. That's SiriusXM.com slash MK show and get three months free. Offer details apply. There was an interesting admission by Ashley Merchant about the cell phone data, which, as you point out, has not yet officially come into evidence. The 10,000 texts, the 2,000 phone calls in 2021 before they were allegedly having the affair, the location data showing him over at her house all the time, including two overnights at least. She said, we had more. We had more. But we only submitted the most conservative ones that were just so clear and that we had them sort of dead to rights. She's like, if we wanted to cast a bit

wider of a net, we could have, but we went, you know, sort of the most conservative we could. And she pointed out because the state was like, they should have submitted this at the hearing that they submitted this too late and you shouldn't consider it. And Ashley told them, we actually had only received the cell phone tracking data the morning of the hearing. And it takes a long time to go through these records, Phil. So that was, I thought, a fascinating fact. Yeah. So that's a great point, too.

And we've talked on your show before about compulsory process and how defendants have a right to subpoena the production of evidence in their favor. But one limiting factor that it's important for people to understand is that we can't just have you send out a subpoena to bring something to my office next week. You've got to list a court date. In other words, there has to be a pending upcoming court date for which the evidence can be subpoenaed to be produced at or for. Okay. So in this case, unless they have a hearing on the books that's calendared, you can't say, hey, AT&T, just send me your stuff. You've got to say, send it to us at that court date or, or, or bring it in person or whatever, but you got to comply with it. That's your deadline. So that means that you can only get it on that day. And so, uh, we, we, as defense lawyers, or even if you're just a civil attorney in a civil case, you've got to have some particular court date, but in a civil case, that was very telling. I think, I think, Phil, that rehabilitated the defense on those cell phone records entirely. She wasn't allowed to send a subpoena to AT&T

until they had the hearing date on on the calendar. As soon as they did, they did send the subpoena. They got the data. They only received it the morning of the hearing. That's not something you just throw up on the court. You need an expert to say, this is what all this data is showing. It's, it's hard to decipher. I think that is the end of it. He's going to allow those records in if he needs them, as you point out, you know, we'll see if he even needs them. But that was, I thought, very compelling. I didn't know any of that behind the scenes. Okay. Now I want to go back to the discussion we had about was Terrence Bradley, you know, town crier Terrence Bradley was out there before he took the stand. Extra, extra. There was an affair. It began before 2022. They went to hotels. They took trips.

He had her garage door opener to check out the old best friend. That's where they did their stuff. OK, that Terrence Bradley did not take the stand. And the question is whether he was threatened, whether what happened between town crier Terrencerence Bradley, and I know nothing, Terrence Bradley. And she was asked, first of all, about Gabe Clark, right? I think that's his name, Gabe. Banks. Banks, sorry. Whatever, Banks. And Gabe Banks did call Terrence Bradley. And that was when they suspected Terrence was potentially talking to Ashley Merchant and others. She said she wouldn't describe it as a threat, but that Terrence Bradley called her afterward and was upset. They were trying to silence him. She said,

he said, Gabe had not threatened him, but asked if he was her source basically. And then she added something I hadn't heard before. The next day, Nathan Wade called Terrence Bradley's best friend and said that there was, that the call, um, was to remind Terrence Bradley of the attorney client privilege. She couldn't remember the name of this best friend. She said he works at, I think, Beasley Allen. Must be a law firm down there, you tell me. But that was a second alleged interference, or you could argue witness tampering, but I guess they didn't know he was a witness yet. In any event, a second call to Bradley that we didn't know about. Yeah, and so if this turns out to be the truth of the matter, and we didn't know about. Yeah. And so if this turns out to be, you know, the truth of the matter, and we've talked before about, you know, Ashley Merchant's not going to

just put Terrence Bradley's name in a pleading and say, Terrence Bradley's going to come to court and he's going to say this, this, this, and this and shell down the corn, as we say here in the unless she had a good faith basis for believing that. So fast forward to the actual testimony, which was very, very different from what Ashley had said that she expected it to be. So then the question becomes why she was able to really answer that question and give us a lot of additional context. We all sort of knew that there was more to it than just the text messages. There was going to be conversations that they've had on the phone and even conversations that they've had in person.

And to hear Ashley tell it to the Senate this morning, she believes that all that together was perceived by Bradley as some type of a threat. And if that's the case, yes, it does raise question about witness tampering. In fact, the chairman of the committee that was asking the questions in the pulpit of the local church. Now we are in intentional malfeasance designed to, I guess, denigrate or to diminish the integrity of the judicial system. This is the kind of place where prosecutors will get disbarred. Here's the other thing. Back to my alleged affair with Steve Krakauer, which isn't really a thing. He's not a thing in any way. He's my friend and my EP. If he got subpoenaed, you know, or let's say it's a third party. Let's say it's you, Phil. And and there and you're like, they're having an

affair. They're having an affair. They're having an affair. And then, you know, you got called up to testify. Steve and I wouldn't be calling you to say, hey, remember your confidentiality obligations to us. You know, we'd be like, go ahead, take the stand, say whatever you're going to say. It's not true. The only reason Nathan Wade had the friend call Terrence Bradley to say, remember attorney client privilege, would be Terrence Bradley has some damaging things to say about Nathan Wade. And if Nathan's getting ready to go admit the affair, you know, the affair, I says nothing to be ashamed of. It started after I got hired. What was he afraid of? The same

thing that's making him not produce the texts from 2021. He had something to hide. That's why he needed Terrence Bradley to go silent. And Terrence Bradley ultimately got the message. All right, let's shift gear. I do. I want to talk about the judge for sure. We have some viewer questions and I like this one, but then I also want to talk about the potential funny business with the money and Nathan Wade, because we got a lot more on that. Ronald writes in, I would be very interested to hear about judge McAfee's judicial demeanor. Is he considered a fair judge by people in the area? I read that he had donated to Willis's election campaign, so I wonder how fair he is. Now,

we know that he, we talked about how he made a small donation, 150 to her, Fannie Willis's campaign. But as you pointed out to the audience before, they couldn't stand the other guy. Most people there donated to Fannie Willis because the other guy was bad. So moving on from that, tell us about this judge, because my biggest fear that he's not going to do this, Phil, is Fulton County went 73 percent for Joe Biden. He's running for reelection. I realize he's more right leaning, but this is a 73 percent for Joe Biden district. How does he win election as a judge in this Fulton County by disqualifying a DA who the county loves? The voters seem to love Fannie Willis and it's very left leaning. I'm sure they can't stand Donald Trump.

How does he do? How does it how does he find the fortitude to do that? Yeah, it's real simple, because unless something's changed since we've begun this broadcast today, he's running unopposed. So he was appointed to fill a vacancy on the court by Governor Kemp, you know, last year. In fact, when this indictment was returned, he was randomly assigned to this case. He had only been on the bench a few years, excuse me, a few months, I should say. So we, in the legal community, nobody really knows much about him. He's an unknown commodity, so to speak, in that sense. But we have seen his judicial temperament. He's very, very low key. He does send, I think, some signals about what he might

be thinking, but we don't have much of a track record to be able to compare our intuition with what he's ultimately going to do in the end. So he's a bit of an enigma in that sense. But if he makes it through the day after tomorrow and nobody qualifies to run against him, he's going to smoothly sail, I should say, to re-election or election, because this will be his first time here coming up in the nonpartisan primary here in Georgia in just a couple of months. So so if if we get past this week, that's why I think that, you know, two weeks is a good

length of time to think about this and to be able to make a ruling. But it also gets you past the qualifying phase of the Georgia election. So that's how he's going to that's how he's going to stay in his office no matter how he rules. OK, I heard something about that. I thought it was just a primary opponent he's going to stay in his office, no matter how he rules. Okay. I heard something about that. I thought it was just a primary opponent he was trying to stay away from. But you're talking about if he gets past two weeks without somebody else throwing their hat in, he's running unopposed. He's basically a secure to reelection.

That's it. Yep. It's a nonpartisan primary for judges. Even though he's appointed by a Republican governor, he doesn't declare a party affiliation for purposes of the judicial race. Okay. Very interesting info. Okay. Here's another thing. Paul Sperry, who's done a bunch of investigations and is a good reporter, posted this on X the other day, developing. An Atlanta lawyer familiar with Judge McAfee's thinking, says he's reluctant to disqualify D.A. Fannie Willis because he's worried ruling would, quote, spill over to every other indictment she has signed.

Now, I don't know whether that's true, but Paul is the legit guy. And that picks up on the thing you and I discussed after the hearing where Judge McAfee was zeroing in on if she lied, if I find she lied, how bad is it going to get? Right. Like and we played the sound bite of Sadow, Trump's lawyer being like, it's about the oath in this case. But you could see the judge was like, oh, shit, if I basically say this district attorney is a liar, how ugly is the hornet's nest? You know, I think I responded to that tweet by Mr. Sperry, and I expressed this. You know, I don't really think that that's the case. I don't know that anybody is going to be familiar enough with the judge's thinking to be able to predict with any degree

of confidence. So it's not like the judge is going to telegraph to any lawyer or anybody else what he's going to do. Maybe his law clerk, and that's going to be about it. So I'm skeptical that that's the case. Now, I do think the judge is concerned about it. But look, as I said in my response to Mr. Sperry's tweet, the judge asked hard questions of both sides. And it's a legitimate thing to wonder, look, if I disqualify Willis from this case, what does that do to all the other thousands and thousands of cases pending in the Superior Court of Fulton County right now that have her name on the indictment? And as I've said before, I believe he's just going to have to let the chips fall where they may. If it calls into question her credibility, so be it.

But listen, at this point, Megan, she's got bigger fish to fry than the cases pending in the Superior Court. As Ashley Merchant said today to the Senate hearing, she's got to worry about her law license. She may have to worry about being prosecuted. Yes, she's got bigger fish to fry for sure. OK, a couple of things I just want to point out. Melissa wrote in saying, um, my question for you is, do you think we'll ever hear from Nathan Wade's ex-wife? I feel like she'd really have some thoughts, maybe even evidence. I kind of wonder if the ex-wife could have been involved in bringing the affair trips to light outside of just what was learned in the divorce proceedings before they were sealed. Do you think her camp might've

tipped off Ashley Merchant to investigate? As we pointed out, Melissa, we learned today that it was Terrence Bradley who kind of tipped off Ashley. It really wasn't Jocelyn Wade, his ex-wife. Another viewer had written in saying, this is Sean, why can't Fannie and Nathan's texts be subpoenaed? I mean, I think that's the thing you were pointing out is defense attorneys, you have limited options to get things like that. You'd really need alleged with the money. First of all, there was a lot made about the fact that why was he even necessary? There are plenty of DAs and assistant district attorneys in the DA's office. And she said, Terrence Bradley called her and said, why do they even need outside counsel to come in on this case? Like he was wondering why Nathan Wade got brought in. They talked about how Nathan Wade had only done misdemeanors. Um, I think prosecuted misdemeanors.

I think he's defended if I'm correct me from wrong felonies, but that everyone thought he's never prosecuted a felony before. So why would you bring him in? And then there was testimony that the district attorneys in her office, the ADA is, I think are making $175,000 a year, which that's amazing. When I graduated law school, the DAs in Manhattan were making $35,000 a year. Now I'm an old lady, so it's been a long time. But anyway, the point is they're nowhere near what Nathan Wade is making, which in two years he made over $700,000. So it's over $350,000 a year he's getting. And she did testify once and for all, he is getting paid more than the other special prosecutors.

Here's a bit of that in SOT 21. There's two other on this case, particularly, there's a lady named Anna Cross and a gentleman named John Floyd. And John Floyd has worked with the DA's office for many years, but that case John Floyd had also helped craft the indictment. And, you know, he's sort of known as a go-to person for racketeering cases, so the district attorney would regularly call on him.

Did you review their billings? I did. I reviewed their billings. Stark contrast. So Mr. Floyd, for example, he was only paid at a rate of $150 an hour. Same case. Same case. And he is. More experience and expertise in RICO cases.

I mean, everybody would agree, I think, that John Floyd is one of the preeminent experts on RICO. Did he have to submit itemized invoices? He did. And his were very different. His were significantly reduced. And the difference, the big difference, was he billed for the time that he was working on the case, not necessarily like eight hours for team meetings. He had itemized billings. Very much so.

Now, Anacross was paid $250 an hour. Anacross is very well-known, very experienced appellate, federal lawyer. They were the same rate. They were $250 an hour, but they were much lower bills, not anywhere near the bills that Mr. Wade did. She had a lower cap. So she and Nathan got $250 an hour. The other guy, the most experienced RICO guy, got $150 an hour. But Floyd and Cross had lower caps than Nathan Wade, who was the least experienced of all, and who you heard it said there, unlike the other two, Nathan Wade had, she said, a funny way of billing for his time. These block summaries of like eight hours on the case, as opposed to how

all lawyers have to do it, which is itemized billing, you know, five minute phone call with client, 10 minutes on brief, 20 minutes conference with judge. That's how you have to bill it. And here's before I get your way and fill a little bit of Ashley talking about that problem with the way Nathan Wade has been billing the taxpayers in this case. You asked earlier about the authorization, that stamp that says OK to pay. I believe that's Dexter Bond's signature. So that was that was one where, you know, that's Dexter Bond's signature. So that was one where Ms. Willis didn't approve it or didn't review it, at least as far as we know from the signatures. But this billing is not something that you would normally see. All right. Well,

I'm noticing this the day and just a number of hours. There's no real itemization of exactly how much time you spend doing whatever type of task? Right. There's none at all. This is just an example, Bill, about the way he billed the county? Oh, completely. I mean, this is, you would never see this. This is what I would call block billing. So it's, I mean, one of them, for example, it's 28 hours over the course of two or three days. Most of his billing is meeting with team, team meeting, team investigation, team brain drain. He called

it different things like that. All right. So Phil, zoom out and explain to the audience what they are trying to show us with all of that. Well, so a tenth of an hour, so 0.1 of an hour is six minutes. And so typically lawyers will bill in the smallest increment that they can because, look, I don't really do a lot by the hour, but if I did, my clients would fly spec my bills and say, okay, why are you billing in eight-hour increments to do research on this issue or that issue? Because it just doesn't make sense. What Ashley is raising here is an issue that honestly the county commission, Fulton County Commission is looking into this.

Some of the commissioners are demanding that Willis justify all this practice because it's very, very non-standard. This is just not how DA's offices operate. So Ashley is raising the issue, you know, is there theft going on? Is this actual theft of taxpayer dollars? And so not only is the Senate looking at it, the county commission's looking at it, the court may look at it, but at a minimum, this tells the other prosecutors, I think, in her office, the full-time assistant DAs, look, I don't trust you. I don't think you're able to do this. And it brings the morale all the way down to the floor. The morale in the DA's office in Fulton County has not been good for quite some time, but I have it on good authority that people who work

there look at this arrangement and they are offended. They feel like they are being slighted. Are you telling me that you're going to bring in this outside lawyer that you happen to be sleeping with and you're going to pay him $250 an hour, $700,000 over the course of a couple of years, and I'm making $150,000, $170,000? Are you kidding me? This is not the kind of message that you want to send to your line prosecutors who, quite frankly, you shouldn't hire them to be felony prosecutors if you don't think they can prosecute a felony, including one like this. It's okay to bring in outside consultants here and there, but this type of over-reliance on independent contractors is so outside the norm of how prosecutors' offices run. Look, even the

independent counsel at the federal level, Jack Smith, he pays a salary. He doesn't bill by the hour. And there's a reason for it, because it avoids things like theft of time or even the appearance of stealing time and stealing taxpayer dollars. This was an extreme misapplication of, I think, her good judgment. I think that this was terrible judgment on her part. And it really does nothing to advance the quality of prosecution in Fulton County, and it only destroys morale. You can see the argument coming together. I mean, I could easily do a closing argument against Fannie Willis as follows. She was in debt. She described herself as broke. She had a tax lien against her. She hired her boyfriend at an exorbitant rate

that wasn't paid to the other two special prosecutors who had far more experience than he did. Once she brought him on board, she allowed him to run herd without any accountability on the number of hours he was actually spending on the case. She did not go through his bills with a fine tooth comb because she did not want to find any errors. She said the people responsible for overseeing his bills were the payment processing people who literally just stamp, okay, she stamps okay to pay, and they just mail the check. There was no independent review of his hours or whether he actually done the work. Why did she do all of that? Because she wanted to go back to the Bahamas.

She wanted to go to Aruba. She wanted to see Napa and the world, which she did and almost got away with had it not been for a little conversation between his former best friend and Ashley Merchant representing one of the defendants in this case. And then to double down on their bad behavior, they took the witness stand and lied about it, violated their oaths as attorneys and their oaths as witnesses to tell the truth to this court. They perpetrated a fraud on the court and on the county, which is why they should not only be booted off of this case, but they should be booted out of office, period. And if you don't believe me that Nathan Wade has a history of lying, look at his interrogatory answers in his divorce proceedings. And if you don't believe me that he would do funny business when it comes to money,

let's take a walk back to that divorce proceeding and take a look at how he was allegedly handling money or more accurately, according to Ashley Merchant, potentially hiding money from his soon to be ex-wife. Here's the soundbite on that, Sot 40. Some of the documents you produced to us, there were a couple of IOLTA trust accounts. Those were Mr. Wade's accounts? Yes. And did you find any discrepancy or whether these funds were deposited there? Yes. At first, he deposited them to his joint IOLTA that he had

with his law partners. And then he started depositing them to his, when I say personal, just him, IOLTA. An IOLTA that did not have anything to do with Mr. Bradley or Mr. Campbell. His ex-wife didn't have any idea. I mean, you could tell from the pleadings that he was even making this much money. I mean, he filed some interrogatories and some answers in that divorce case saying that he made a couple thousand dollars a month. I mean, very, very minimal. And he has a lot of money parked in one of those IOLTAs that's not disclosed in the divorce. As much as I wish we could park money in IOLTAs that was earned and not pay ourselves, we can't do that. So when you're when you earn money, you can't leave it in your eye all the time. We should point out today that Nathan Wade, according to Ashley Merchant today, testified at that hearing.

He basically just gives these accounting issues to his accountant and lets him take care of them. And we didn't hear from Nathan Wade directly yet in front of this Georgia State Senate proceeding. So keep an open mind on what his defenses are to these charges. That's all they are at this point. I understood exactly what she said, and it was bad, but please, Phil, explain it to the audience because nobody's ever heard of IOLTA. Yeah, it's interest on lawyer's trust accounts. That's what Georgia calls the attorney's escrow. Anybody who's ever purchased a home, for example, and used an attorney to close the loan has, whether they realize it or not, they've dealt with a lawyer's escrow account. It's typically the kind of place where you're going to hold money that doesn't really belong to you, but it's in your name as

a lawyer. It's different from our business operating account that we pay our employees and pay ourselves out of. It's where you hold proceeds from settlements. It's where you will hold money that your client may be paying that you're going to need for an expert witness in a case, or it may be your own retainer fee that you have not yet earned because you haven't done the work if you're billing by the hour or something along those lines. But it's not the kind of place when you earn money. I mean, I guess you could park it if you wanted to in your IELTS or your escrow account. But if you do that and you don't declare it as earned income, that's a tax issue. But it also probably violates the rules that the state bar has put Wade was essentially parking it there in order to perhaps hide it from his wife in the divorce or even to perhaps hide it from his business partners,

which at one time included Bradley. And so this could be, and I think Ashley said it was part of the reason. She said, it's my understanding that was one of the reasons their firm broke up. Keep going. Yeah. That's the biggest thing that people in the law business break up with each other over is money. That's the biggest thing that drives law firms apart when partners leave. And so it makes perfectly good sense to me that it could be an issue over money. And so another interesting thing was that each of these lawyers who were in supposedly this firm, they had their own individual attorneys' escrow accounts in addition to one that maybe they were all involved with. There's nothing per se wrong with that, but it's certainly very unusual. And it's not the kind of law firm that we traditionally think of when we hear about these

things. This is not good. They should have just admitted it. They should have just said, we did it. But he was her third choice. She, he wasn't hired for this reason. And you know what, for the sake of justice, we'll resign. Like he definitely should have said, I'll step down. And she then if forced to at this point should say, I'll step down. There's no, this is going to be so bad for them. We're talking about bar cards being possibly revoked felony. That word's getting banged around. Georgia investigation. The U.S. Congress is taking a look at this.

If there's any funny business with the money, now they're going to find out about that, too. I mean, this is a nightmare for these two over something they could have avoided if they just been honest that they did something colossally stupid up front when they got caught. Phil, you're the best. You're so good. Thank you so much for all the insights and all this. And please come back the next time we have news, which will probably be in about two minutes. Yeah, at this rate, it could be any time. And always, thank you very much for having me. It's a story that's not going away, and I'm sure we'll talk again soon. We'll look forward to it. And thanks to all of you for joining me and us today. If you have questions yourself about this Fannie Willis case or any other thing,

please keep the feedback coming. You can email me directly at megan, M-E-G-Y-N, at megankelly.com. I love reading them. It's fun to go through them. We've gotten some great questions. We actually had some more. We haven't gotten to them all, but we will. We'll continue answering your questions over the coming days because as you know, this case isn't going anywhere, at least not in the couple days that we have ahead of us. Love reading it all. See you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear. Thank you.