Dear listeners,
The mess in Georgia continues, with Trump attorney Steve Sadow producing cell phone location records that appear to show Nathan Wade spending an awful lot of time near Fani Willis’s apartment before Wade and Willis claim their relationship started. How did Sadow even get those records? the DA’s office asks. The answer is “pursuant to a subpoena,” which Wade did not attempt to quash — oops. Wade’s friend, former attorney and ex-law partner Terrence Bradley also got back on the stand after Judge Scott McAfee determined whatever he knows about the relationship wasn’t privileged, and we saw his text messages in which he told Ashleigh Merchant that Wade and Willis were involved before Wade was hired to prosecute the RICO case, but Bradley insisted he had just been speculating about when Wade had been sleeping with Willis, which doesn’t seem like a great thing to do as someone’s lawyer, business partner, or friend.
As a reminder, this all bears on the question of whether Fani Willis and her office will be disqualified from conducting the RICO prosecution of Donald Trump and his various co-defendants over his efforts to steal Georgia’s electoral votes. This week, Ken and I invited Georgia attorney Andrew Fleischman back on the show to talk about just how this case got so prurient and stupid, what might happen with it next, and whether this is just what happens when prosecutors have to defend and defense attorneys have to prosecute.
Meanwhile, in New York, District Attorney Alvin Bragg wants Donald Trump under another gag order — raising some questions that courts have gotten better at answering over the last few months. And out west, Biden accuser Alexander Smirnov got sprung from jail and almost immediately re-arrested, as Los Angeles-based Judge Otis Wright sought to ensure that he could not flee the country. And another SoCal federal judge, Cormac Carney, is in a spat with the Ninth Circuit over his unusually expansive view of when a defendant can get off on the grounds of selective prosecution.
That’s all in this week’s episode, which is free for all subscribers. A few things are not in this episode: a discussion of Hunter Biden’s congressional interview, which was happening while we were recording; a discussion of Donald Trump’s appeal bond for the New York AG’s case, which he appealed while we were recording; or a discussion of the Supreme Court’s decision to take up Trump’s immunity-related appeal, which came out about an hour after we finished recording. You know how these things go — we’ll pick those topics up next week.
We hope you enjoy the episode,
Josh
G.A. Law