Cellphone records implicate Willis and Wade in perjury
Note the way the AP frames the story: “Trump submits cellphone records allegedly showing Nathan Wade and Fani Willis’ interactions before hiring.” In other words, Trump pounces:
Former President Donald Trump on Friday submitted a request to enter new evidence in his Georgia election interference case based off Fulton County prosecutor Nathan Wade’s cellphone records, which the filing claims show that Wade visited the home of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis approximately 35 times during an 11-month period in 2021.
The records could be used to dispute Willis and Wade’s claims about their relationship timeline.
The new filing from Trump comes in the wake of an evidentiary hearing over efforts to disqualify Willis and Wade from the case, during which both Willis and Wade testified under oath last week that their romantic relationship did not begin until after Wade was officially hired in November 2021, and that the relationship started in 2022.
Sure does sound as though it “could be used” that way.
But Willis said under oath that she didn’t consider her relationship with Wade to be “romantic” prior to hiring him, although she said they were friends. And yet the cell phone records seem to show “2,000 calls and nearly 12,000 texts messages” in 2021, mostly prior to Wade’s hiring. Plus:
Mittlestadt said he also looked at “geolocation activity” of Wade’s phone, which he said revealed “a minimum” of 35 instances in which Wade’s phone connected “for an extended period” to the towers near a home in Hapeville, Georgia, where Willis was allegedly living at the time.
“The data reveals he is stationary and not in transit,” the affidavit states.
This is far more visits than Wade testified to under oath. Oh, and also:
…[T]he investigator claims in his affidavit that records show Wade’s phone arrived in the area of Willis’s apartment at 10:45 pm in September 2021, and remained there until approximately 3:30 in the morning. The investigator claimed the records show Wade’s phone arrived back to the area of his apartment just after 4:05 a.m., and that Wade “sent a text at 4:20am to Ms. Willis.”
Wade wasn’t hired until November of 2021.
Of course, maybe it wasn’t actually “romantic.” Maybe it was just “friends with benefits.”
Or maybe the two are just night owls. Doesn’t everyone visit friends till 3:30 AM? Maybe college students; but these weren’t college students.
So, what were the pair thinking when they denied all of this? Surely, as prosecutors and lawyers, they know full well that cell phones contain this sort of evidence. I’m not certain whether text messages always can be found even if deleted, but my guess is that they can. We haven’t heard anything about the substance of those texts, but 12,000 is a whole load of them.
I suppose Willis and Wade felt immune from investigation, although they were engaged in trying to bring down highly influential people – not just Trump, but others as well. Had they always been protected prior to this? Will they continue to be protected, or is this just too egregious?
I suppose Willis and Wade felt immune from investigation
Perhaps they immagined that they would have enough cover from fellow travellers who might’ve stonewalled on the retrieval of the cellphone records? Or perhaps they immagined that Trump’s team wouldn’t attempt to retrieve them for some reason? Or they just didn’t understand how cell phone information, text messages and geolocation data is stored and can later be retrieved? Which as you’ve said, as lawyers in the modern age they should be well aware of. But then again they neither one strikes me as particularly bright given their testimony.
At any rate, it’s pretty clear that they lied under oath now. We’ll see what happens from here. But it seems like this particular case against Trump will effectively be dead in the water due to all this. Or at least I don’t see how it can be continued in any sort of timely fashion.
I’m thinking you could say they were protected in a way. They both probably were used to skirting the ethical lines, employing friends and exchanging favors with the powerful. It got to be a habit and they never stopped to consider that this case might get extra attention.
He was banging her. Did she find that romantic? Did he? They don’t strike me as romantics beyond their wish list for Donald Trump. What they were doing was what southern black folks used to call “Getting their ashes hauled.” Leave it at that.
Of course the evidence is overwhelming that Wade and Willis lied under oath about their relationship and this should be disqualifying. But I’m not sure it matters. Margaret Carlson (yes apparently she is still alive) has the predictable defense in Washington Monthly in which she explains that Fani is only guilty “of being human”. After all it’s only lying about sex and doesn’t everybody do that?
Looks to me like an extension of the Black Lives Matter victimization scam. They’re black, so their behavior cannot be scrutinized, and if it is, they’re victims, not unethical lawyers.
I think Fani is quite powerful in Atlanta and Fulton County. She certainly was unafraid to be quite contemptable on the stand. The judge was her law clerk. I believe he’s afraid of her.
What’s obviously a lie to those of us on the outside looking in isn’t necessarily going to be the way it’s seen in Fulton County. The power structure there is probably used to “fixing things” for the right people. I’ll be surprised if she and Wade are removed from the case.
Am I too cynical? We’ll see.
This whole story turns my stomach. I wish they hadn’t televised the hearing, I wish the media weren’t covering it as the prurient disaster it is. Blah.
Am I too cynical?
You are not.
“… the cell phone records seem to show ‘2,000 calls and nearly 12,000 texts messages’ in 2021, mostly prior to Wade’s hiring.”
I thought I knew the import of this story. But no where else have I heard these amazing numbers. Fani and friend cannot be believed to have told the truth.
Some commenter on YouTube a week ago says he lives in Atlanta, and the Fani Willis saga is all that the locals are talking about there.
Willis and Wade are law school graduates, can you believe? What law school? Probably one in the HBCU sky.They are no more than execrable, lying, even criminal worms who serve to degrade their fellow blacks as pigs that rut in the mud. They are truly disgusting personae.
I checked:Fani’s papa was in the Black Panthers in California. She attended black Howard U, then righteous Emory law school.
@ Mike+Plaiss to Neo’s “Am I too cynical?” – “You are not.”
If I could do memes I would make some clever picture with the caption being a phrase frequently used at Not the Bee:
“No matter how much you hate (_______), you don’t hate them enough.”
Fill in the blank with the name of some institution: I have a little list —
The Democrat Party
The Press
The government bureaucracy
The Three-Letter Agencies (each can be named specifically, as desired)
The Medical Establishment (as per the Covid Tyranny)
The Legal Establishment
Universities and Academia
Teacher Unions
… et cetera, et cetera, et cetera
This reminds me a lot of the Strzok-Page “romance” that played out in the Russia-Russia-Russia collusion by the FBI, CIA, DOJ, et al.
Supposedly, both of these couples are “experts” who ought to know that nothing digital stays hidden forever, but made no effort to hide their incriminating texts, emails, etc.
@ Christopher+B > “they never stopped to consider that this case might get extra attention.”
They wanted the attention and the limelight of “getting Trump”; neither couple seriously considered that the other side could get access to their records, would try to do so, and would be successful.
It seems to be a common failing on the Left (Hunter Biden et al. being the most egregious example), but there are many other examples.
I wonder if they really do think there is some kind of “cone of protection” over their actions that can’t be breached, and are always surprised when it is.
James O’Keefe’s videos are another example: despite his prominence, and well-know MO, people keep falling for the sting. No one ever expects the Veritas Inquisition.
Fortunately, selection and promotion by ideology rather than by merit has fortunate side effects for their opponents.
I wonder if they really do think there is some kind of “cone of protection” over their actions that can’t be breached, and are always surprised when it is.
AesopFan:
Speaking as a former 70s/80s leftist, hey, just about all my comrades got off. Bill Effin’ Ayers included.
Part of that high style is coloring outside the lines and getting away with it.
Mostly they still do.
@ huxley > “coloring outside the lines and getting away with it.”
That does seem to be the usual situation.
Despite the reams of evidence about their illegal actions, somehow they never suffer for their “artwork,” or at most draw a fraction of the legal consequences that should have been imposed.
And then they wave the coloring book in our faces and jeer.
This is, of course, one of the reasons we got Trump the first time.
I note that John Hinderaker also observed the romantic parallel I remarked on:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/02/get-a-load-of-fani-2.php
If the two of them are not disgraced, dismissed, and debarred, then your former comrades will have welcomed two more members under their protective cone.
Which is deplorable.
Disbarred, not debarred, although that is also a just consequence of their perfidy and perjury.
Sadly, I don’t know how long we can continue as a unified nation under such a blatantly biased justice system, even if it is rampant in only part of the country, since that portion includes the center of federal governance.
Another relevant Powerline Post – will conservatives continue to flee Democrat-run states out of fear of lawfare, as well as economic and social disfunction?
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/02/red-states-getting-redder.php
Let’s hope the refugees continue to hold the ideological line.
Some businessmen and investors are already saying they won’t do business in New York anymore, but I’m afraid some of them are also Democrat supporters.
If they don’t become “former Democrat supporters” then moving won’t help them any.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/business/2866674/investors-pull-business-new-york-following-trump-verdict/
The Left is strangely naive about some things. This in a sense highlights their insistence that a guilty party must ” apologize” for their misdeeds.
The best part of this was when Willis said that she didn’t have any idea this behavior might be seen as a conflict of interest.
@AesopFan (above) “… will conservatives continue to flee Democrat-run states out of fear of lawfare, as well as economic and social disfunction?”
You didn’t say it, but might that put Georgia on the cusp of becoming a “from” state” rather than a “to” state in the Great Migration? The economic evacuation of New York (and Illinois, and California and….) is being driven by concern over the political corruption of value and resultant income by Democrats; Georgia, as based on its largest population center and capital, is also largely a Democrat-run entity (Kemp may be an R, but how strong an R may be open to examination, and governors are dependent on the bureaucracy below them to conduct basic operations and achieve results). I haven’t seen evidence that the Willis-Wade business is a “tip of the iceberg” thing but when officialdom engages in rampant skulduggery, a la Strzok/Page, it’s usually indicative of deeper organizational faults.
Hubris and epic stupidity in these two. Astonishing and shocking, but not surprising.
That’s an average of six phone calls a day, and thirty-six texts per day. Between people who were, at that point in time, merely friendly acquaintances.
What would the First, Second and Third Laws of Reparations indicate in this situation?
Together with the First Law of Trumpodynamics.
Right.
Criminals rarely think they will get caught. The smarter ones are the arrogant ones, and I’d put Fani and friend in that group.
“So, what were the pair thinking when they denied all of this? Surely, as prosecutors and lawyers, they know full well that cell phones contain this sort of evidence.”
It’s “intersectionality”. They believed that the intersection of their black privilege with their liberal privilege caused them to be immune from criticism, let alone prosecution.
They were wrong about the former, time will tell if they were wrong about the latter.