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

00:00:00.540 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:12.140 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly and welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.360 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.

00:00:24.540 Updates to this story continue flowing in even as Judge Scott McAfee continues weighing his decision this week.

00:00:33.040 We've got it all covered. There were developments and there are rumors about this judge we're going to get to as well.

00:00:39.240 Back with me now, Phil Holloway of Holloway Law Group in Cobb County, Georgia.

00:00:46.240 Phil, great to see you.

00:00:47.420 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.

00:00:56.060 So I saw all of sort of what I'd call the direct examination by a more friendly inquisitor.

00:01:01.000 And then came somebody who was more fanny friendly and so to say, so to say.

00:01:06.060 And 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.

00:01:12.560 But let's start back with those first three hours. And I know you watched the whole first thing.

00:01:16.080 My overall impression was Ashley Merchant is, number one, very clearly a truth teller.

00:01:22.060 And one of the biggest things I learned was a lot of people thought, like, how did she get on to this?

00:01:29.260 Did Nathan Wade's ex-wife call her and let her know about?

00:01:34.060 No, it was Terrence Bradley who first turned her on to this whole story.

00:01:40.240 The, you know, same guy with all the memory problems the other day.

00:01:44.180 He's he's patient zero in this whole matter.

00:01:47.080 Yeah. Great to be with you again.

00:01:48.460 This is really, you know, like drinking from a fire hose, trying to consume all this information and digest it.

00:01:54.760 But fortunately, a lot of what we heard today was not entirely unexpected.

00:01:58.840 Like I, for example, had a pretty good idea that they were going to get into much more than the text messages.

00:02:06.080 The text messages are just sort of a snippet of all of this.

00:02:09.600 We know that there's conversations that Ashley has had with Terrence Bradley, and she talked about some of those today.

00:02:16.860 In fact, she 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.

00:02:26.660 And they're just chit-chatting the way lawyers, the way we do when when we're all in court.

00:02:31.540 And and apparently she started just, you know, taking notes, you know, and asking follow up questions.

00:02:37.400 And the conversation began sort of ongoing with Terrence over over some period of time.

00:02:43.140 But but she really did, I think, a very good job of of being responsive.

00:02:47.560 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.

00:02:56.940 And I've got a little bit more to explain.

00:02:58.700 So she was, I think, very, very thorough, obviously very well prepared.

00:03:02.820 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 the public discussion and the information that we all have about this than we've gotten in a lot of these court hearings.

00:03:18.700 So really, we had a really, really good hearing today.

00:03:22.240 And I think there may be additional information yet to come, but it was quite illuminating, to say the least.

00:03:28.560 We're going to play some sound bites.

00:03:29.840 But what are they trying to do, Phil?

00:03:31.640 What is the goal of this committee?

00:03:33.060 What power do they have to affect what change?

00:03:36.880 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.

00:03:42.500 And that was really what inspired them to to set up this this committee within the Georgia Senate.

00:03:47.860 And of course, the Senate, you know, they can't remove Fonnie Willis.

00:03:51.000 They can't sanction her. 0.84

00:03:52.600 But what they can do is they can start the the lawmaking process.

00:03:57.060 They can rein in rogue prosecutors.

00:03:59.500 The legislature can enact laws that that tighten the rules about conflicts of interest.

00:04:05.780 They can make it a crime, for example, if they wanted to to use nepotism in terms of hiring your contractors.

00:04:13.040 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.

00:04:25.780 There's a lot that they can do, and they're going to figure out just what happened here in terms of prosecutorial misconduct.

00:04:33.260 If there was any that they believe that they can they can use their power as half of the legislature to effect change next time around.

00:04:41.960 They're not going to be able to do anything this legislative session.

00:04:44.380 And it's too late. But you can mark my words.

00:04:46.820 There will be change coming from the Georgia legislature next year.

00:04:50.940 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.

00:05:02.560 Right in the middle of the proceedings, that was part of the fun of just watching Ashley Merchant have a heart to heart with these guys.

00:05:09.060 You mentioned how she kind of just described getting to know Terrence Bradley.

00:05:14.020 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.

00:05:23.460 Somebody had a client who was copping to a plea and they started chatting and he was no longer Nathan Wade's partner and maybe no longer his friend.

00:05:33.600 That partnership ended in, she thought, August of 2023.

00:05:40.180 And I I wondered whether that was the year.

00:05:43.040 I thought it was earlier than that.

00:05:44.220 But in any event, she described how they started chit chatting and he was a fountain of information.

00:05:51.280 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.

00:05:59.260 And present, according to her, was this man who was just telling her in narrative form everything about this affair, how it began in twenty nineteen to right around there and was hot and heavy straight through.

00:06:11.360 Here's just a little bit of her talking about that in SOT 23.

00:06:15.000 Mr. Bradley essentially went through the whole the whole thing.

00:06:18.940 He said that they met at a judicial conference before he was very specific that it was before she became D.A.

00:06:25.260 Because that was one of the things that he could he couldn't remember when the judicial conference was.

00:06:30.260 But he knew that it was before she became D.A.

00:06:33.440 And said that they had been they had been together.

00:06:35.680 They met at this conference.

00:06:37.400 Nathan was still married.

00:06:38.400 And he Mr. Bradley was upset because of what happened in the divorce.

00:06:44.900 He was upset because they were still married.

00:06:47.380 You know, the ways were still married.

00:06:48.760 And he essentially just left her after meeting Miss Willis and dropping the kids off at college.

00:06:54.580 And I remember specifically him saying, you know, I handle my business, things like that.

00:06:57.880 Like, you know, that I don't leave my wife without alimony.

00:07:00.440 And so he was telling me about the the access cards, you know, that Mr.

00:07:04.240 Wade had access cards telling me about the contracts, told me about their contract, that they had that Nathan had brought them the contracts for the first appearance hearings.

00:07:12.200 And ultimately that Nathan was hired as the attorney on this case that they had been dating before.

00:07:18.240 And he I mean, he told me, you know, they met at hotels.

00:07:21.520 He would go to her her place.

00:07:24.240 And he's I remember him saying, you need to find her her bestie who they had a falling out.

00:07:30.720 That's the person whose condo it was.

00:07:34.540 It was fascinating, Phil.

00:07:36.060 I mean, we heard a lot of that.

00:07:37.160 Well, saw a lot of that in the text messages that were released, right, that we have now in full.

00:07:42.280 But to hear her say, you know, he volunteered all of this to her and not just to her.

00:07:47.840 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 to two other lawyers, a D.A.

00:07:55.920 and a private lawyer who had a defendant in this case who I think ultimately got dropped.

00:08:01.000 Yeah.

00:08:01.140 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.

00:08:13.920 So this is like just two friends having a casual conversation while they're waiting on their case to get called in court.

00:08:20.480 And so what you see here is a description of Mr. Bradley just having a casual, friendly conversation.

00:08:27.620 She's, of course, taking notes.

00:08:28.940 And then she goes about the business of corroborating it.

00:08:32.260 You heard her go into great detail saying how she just didn't take his word for it. 0.64

00:08:36.340 She didn't disbelieve him, but she did her homework.

00:08:38.960 She looked to verify, you know, when did the city of South Fulton, Georgia, where she was, where Willis was the part-time judge, when did that city actually send her to this conference?

00:08:50.600 And so she did her homework to confirm these things.

00:08:53.220 But look, it wasn't just Ashley Merchant that was hearing all this.

00:08:57.340 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.

00:09:09.080 I saw the testimony and I have a different story.

00:09:13.000 This was told to me differently and I need to set the record straight.

00:09:17.380 And now we also have Manny Aurora, who represented before there was a plea, another co-defendant in the case who also had conversations.

00:09:25.320 And so what we're starting to see, the dam is breaking, Megan.

00:09:29.060 And we have person after person after person coming forward to say there is a fraud being perpetrated on the court.

00:09:37.160 Bonnie Willis is not telling the truth.

00:09:39.540 We now have a filing as of yesterday.

00:09:41.540 I think Donald Trump's legal team has literally said that Bonnie Willis and her team is perpetrating a fraud on the court.

00:09:48.860 That is a separate basis that, independent of any other conflict of interest, that's a separate basis.

00:09:54.980 And I agree for her to be disqualified from the case. 0.98

00:09:58.360 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.

00:10:07.100 It's as important as the right to be presumed innocent.

00:10:11.040 And it's the right, like the right to a jury and the right to a lawyer.

00:10:14.220 You've got a right to have a prosecutor that doesn't lie to the court, that doesn't go to these extreme links to perpetrate a fraud on the court just to get somebody.

00:10:24.040 OK, that's not how the system works.

00:10:25.960 That's not what it was designed to do.

00:10:27.740 And if we don't have that, we don't have fairness.

00:10:30.160 And if we don't have fundamental fairness, the constitutional requirements have not been met.

00:10:35.500 The case should be dismissed.

00:10:38.260 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.

00:10:55.960 That was my assessment to the notion that Bradley was just speculating in these texts.

00:11:02.140 And if that's the judge's conclusion, then he can dismiss the texts.

00:11:06.260 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.

00:11:14.300 Terrence Bradley told me it began long before 2022.

00:11:18.760 And the judge seemed to be really wanting to know, is that Terrence Bradley's speculation or did he actually know?

00:11:26.880 There's been no proof that he knew.

00:11:30.680 And I mean, they tried at that hearing to point out, he said, absolutely, I believe it began.

00:11:37.460 The question was, do you believe, do you think it began prior to when she hired him?

00:11:41.220 And he said, absolutely.

00:11:42.520 Absolutely. And the state said, well, that could be absolutely, I think so.

00:11:46.640 I think so. But then he volunteered on his own.

00:11:49.860 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.

00:11:55.900 He had an actual time on it.

00:11:57.240 And if you look at the whole text message strain, it shows he had all sorts of ideas about how she could prove it.

00:12:03.240 Anyway, all that's a long winded way of saying, I'm not sure the judge believes that that they've established Terrence Bradley had personal knowledge when he was blabbing to all these people.

00:12:12.520 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.

00:12:25.240 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.

00:12:32.000 And if he didn't have personal knowledge, he wouldn't be able to say it in this way.

00:12:35.580 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,

00:12:49.720 he probably will reopen the evidence before he does that to allow them to offer some of this other testimony.

00:12:56.420 We've not even heard testimony about the cell phone location data.

00:13:01.120 So he suggested that, yeah, he suggested that he might have enough to make a ruling based on what he's heard.

00:13:08.180 And remember, he can rely on Robin Yurdy.

00:13:11.620 We know that Robin Yurdy has personal information that she testified to under oath that the affair began much earlier.

00:13:19.060 And that is consistent with everything that these witnesses are saying that Bradley has told them over the last many, many months.

00:13:26.020 And she was dragged there.

00:13:26.760 That's the other thing, Phil.

00:13:27.620 She didn't want to be there.

00:13:28.740 She did not want to be there.

00:13:30.260 She got dragged there against her will.

00:13:32.160 She complied with the subpoena.

00:13:33.840 But that's even more to her credit, that she was a reluctant witness.

00:13:36.920 She wasn't trying to burn or settle any scores with Fannie Willis. 0.51

00:13:41.120 She didn't even want to go.

00:13:42.980 If she wanted to settle scores with Fannie Willis, she would have been like, how soon can I show up?

00:13:46.120 I'll be your lead witness.

00:13:47.020 Keep me up there for two hours.

00:13:48.060 I can go on.

00:13:49.280 That's not what we saw.

00:13:50.480 And the judge knows how to assess credibility the same as you or I.

00:13:53.820 So Ashley Merchant made another point today that I thought was very strong.

00:13:57.220 And I was waiting for her to make it.

00:13:58.660 And you and I have discussed it, too.

00:13:59.940 I mean, I was saying the same thing.

00:14:01.260 You know, if you have seen in my my executive producer, Steve Krakauer, if somebody said, did you have a do you have an affair with Steve Krakauer?

00:14:07.760 Like he came over to your house a lot.

00:14:09.040 I'd be like, no.

00:14:10.400 And there's a lot of text messages between the two of you.

00:14:12.600 And I'd say, take a look at them.

00:14:14.040 Here's what they say.

00:14:14.880 Get me that soundbite.

00:14:15.920 Get me the other one.

00:14:16.900 Why wasn't that done on time?

00:14:19.580 That's that's what our why haven't these two, if they're so innocent, shown the judge their texts from there.

00:14:28.460 There are some 10,000 texts from 2021 when they claim they weren't having an affair.

00:14:34.240 But all the cell phone data shows him texting and calling and going over to her house in the wee hours of the evening.

00:14:39.840 Here is Ashley Merchant on that and stop 22.

00:14:43.500 Do you ever look at his calendar?

00:14:45.180 Do you have access to that to see if it matched up?

00:14:47.660 No, I didn't have access to his calendar.

00:14:48.920 And I didn't have access to their, like, text messages.

00:14:52.140 I mean, I was able to get their, get his geolocation data through subpoena.

00:14:56.560 But the, I mean, 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.

00:15:04.920 They have, they have a system, it's called Celebrite, Celebrite.

00:15:09.020 And Fulton County pays for it.

00:15:10.580 City of Atlanta pays for it.

00:15:11.760 It's a, it's literally a system that you can hook your phone into.

00:15:14.500 I hook your phone up and it can find deleted text.

00:15:16.560 It can find everything.

00:15:18.020 And you can limit it.

00:15:19.140 You can say, I only want texts with this person.

00:15:21.200 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,

00:15:28.220 the easiest thing to do is to, you know, download that phone.

00:15:34.160 So apparently, I mean, she made a good point about how this is a very sophisticated technology that you can limit it.

00:15:40.720 You don't have to disclose all of your texts, like between you and your kid or whatever.

00:15:45.060 You can say just, just the two of us and just on this subject.

00:15:48.220 And then you can screen so that there's nothing really personal being divulged.

00:15:52.920 And that the DA's office has it, Phil.

00:15:55.160 They have this technology.

00:15:56.540 They use it all the time.

00:15:59.120 They got their own police force at the DA's office in Fulton County.

00:16:02.560 They've got their own criminal investigators.

00:16:04.160 They have some right.

00:16:05.040 They said so in court.

00:16:07.000 We know.

00:16:07.720 Look, we know why Willis has not released her text messages with Nathan Waite.

00:16:13.120 We know that because it would show that the affair did, in fact, begin before they have testified to in court.

00:16:20.920 That's why, in my opinion, she has not released it, because it proves that she's guilty as Team Trump and Ashley Merchant.

00:16:27.880 Have accused her of being of lying to the court.

00:16:30.640 So she really, at this point, can't do it.

00:16:33.480 And I think the point that Ashley Merchant made in this hearing was important for people to understand.

00:16:39.740 And we defense lawyers, we can't go get search warrants.

00:16:42.860 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.

00:16:56.700 Criminal defense lawyers cannot do that.

00:16:58.580 So the idea that they can somehow use the subpoena process, it just doesn't work that way.

00:17:06.540 Fonnie Willis is the only person, or Nathan Waite, 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.

00:17:20.420 If they can do that and they can show that they were not lying, then great, that will settle it.

00:17:25.760 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.

00:17:35.620 They don't want any of this out.

00:17:37.540 Why?

00:17:37.760 Because I believe that it shows they're lying.

00:17:40.800 And if they have lied to the court about this, what else are they lying about?

00:17:45.940 This cuts to the heart of fundamental fairness, due process.

00:17:49.660 I think the judge has no real choice but to grant the motion.

00:17:54.560 I feel that the evidence is, at this point, it's overwhelming.

00:17:57.880 If he reopens the evidence, that should suggest to us that maybe he's thinking about denying it.

00:18:02.580 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.

00:18:12.220 And if she does that, then the case is essentially over.

00:18:15.460 He may not go so far as to dismiss the indictment.

00:18:17.840 He may leave that to any potential successor prosecutor, if they can find one to take this case.

00:18:23.540 But at a minimum, I think he's leaning, Megan, towards disqualifying the whole team.

00:18:27.580 I don't really see he has much choice in the matter.

00:18:29.260 People don't, I mean, maybe they do know, but, you know, I practiced law for 10 years.

00:18:34.340 I was at a lovely, very, very successful law firm.

00:18:39.340 You've got a very successful law practice.

00:18:41.840 It is extremely unusual for lawyers who are this prominent to be out there openly lying to the court in any context, never mind under oath.

00:18:53.820 You know, I can't tell you the number of conversations we'd have behind closed doors, you know, where somebody's like, oh, it's a bad document.

00:18:59.900 You know, like, what are we going to do with that?

00:19:00.960 Well, we're going to produce it to the other side.

00:19:02.700 You want you want to give up your law license for this client? 0.60

00:19:05.360 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?

00:19:10.900 No, we 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.

00:19:24.860 And, you know, the middle of nowhere who get outed as unethical pretty quickly in the system, in my experience.

00:19:31.540 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.

00:19:45.960 And what I believe is repeated lies in this case, too, while under oath, it's extraordinary.

00:19:52.540 Here is Ashley Merchant being asked by the Georgia Senate, what does all of this mean?

00:19:58.720 If they if they lied, what do we have here?

00:20:02.140 It's SOT 24.

00:20:04.120 What are the consequences for an attorney to give sworn testimony that she did? 0.87

00:20:10.480 And if you're Bradley, what is it?

00:20:14.540 Year key, year T, year T, your trackhawk data, your other independent verifications are found to be truthful.

00:20:24.100 It's a crime.

00:20:25.000 It's a felony.

00:20:25.700 You'd lose your license.

00:20:26.920 It's perjury.

00:20:27.800 Same for Wade.

00:20:28.920 Yes.

00:20:31.440 Boom, right there.

00:20:32.560 So what, Phil, happens there?

00:20:35.500 Well, let's say this judge says, you know, I disqualify them because I don't think they told the

00:20:40.420 court the truth.

00:20:41.340 He doesn't get to disbar.

00:20:42.620 He doesn't get to do any of that other stuff.

00:20:43.940 So what what would happen then?

00:20:45.980 Well, I'm glad you played that specific SOT because that was exactly the point of her testimony

00:20:50.200 that I wanted to get to.

00:20:51.720 If if what she's saying bears out to be true, that there was perjury that was done, that there

00:20:58.320 was other.

00:20:58.900 And by the way, it is a crime in Georgia if you're an elected official to violate your oath

00:21:04.560 of office.

00:21:04.920 It's a felony offense.

00:21:06.020 It carries up to five years in prison.

00:21:08.360 Perjury is also a felony.

00:21:09.560 You can get disbarred for lying to the court.

00:21:12.000 You can get disbarred for committing felonies.

00:21:14.160 And can I read to you, if I have just a moment, the oath of office that Fonnie Willis had to

00:21:19.300 take?

00:21:19.640 It says, I do swear that I will faithfully and impartially, without fear, favor or affection,

00:21:27.020 discharge my duties as district attorney, and I will take only my lawful compensation.

00:21:32.140 So help me God.

00:21:33.260 And so if if she lies to the judge under oath, how can you say that she has faithfully and

00:21:41.500 impartially, impartially, without fear or favor, discharge her duties?

00:21:46.680 I just don't see that.

00:21:48.820 So I'm wondering if the Senate committee, among the legislative changes that they may be getting

00:21:53.720 to, I'm wondering if they're not gearing up to make a criminal referral, perhaps to the

00:21:58.100 Georgia attorney general, because there needs to be, and we've talked about this, because

00:22:03.060 if there's a criminal, just to jump in quickly, Bill, if there's a criminal referral, now we

00:22:07.780 are going to be able to see the texts between the two of them.

00:22:11.100 Yeah, because they would be able to access their cell phones.

00:22:14.360 And we know that unless they throw them in the Chattahoochee River here in Atlanta, that

00:22:19.020 even if they're deleted, the law enforcement can still get them.

00:22:23.280 So the attorney general, theoretically, if he wanted to look into this, he could get the

00:22:27.580 Georgia Bureau of Investigation to open up a criminal investigation to investigate whether

00:22:32.260 there was the felony offense of perjury, whether there's the felony offense of violation of

00:22:36.940 oath of office or anything else.

00:22:39.400 And I would not at all be surprised if that's not one of the things we see from the Senate

00:22:44.460 committee when it wraps up its business.

00:22:46.620 We won't know until next year what legislative changes they might be able to get, but they

00:22:50.840 can make a criminal referral pretty easily.

00:22:53.100 And then it, of course, will be up to the attorney general.

00:22:55.720 But I'm at the point where I'm wondering if maybe that hasn't already happened.

00:22:59.600 We just don't know if the attorney general is looking into this, but it could already be

00:23:03.960 underway.

00:23:04.320 I think that regardless of whether the AG gets involved, somebody, whether it's the

00:23:09.820 Senate, I don't think they're exactly the right entity, but we need a full and complete

00:23:14.960 independent investigation beyond what these lawyers are able to do with their limited

00:23:20.720 means as attorneys.

00:23:22.020 We need somebody with full subpoena power, with full ability to get search warrants, to

00:23:26.980 be able to get to the bottom of all of this because the integrity of the system depends on

00:23:31.840 and the judge has an obligation, in my view, to make sure that the system works, that the

00:23:37.560 integrity of the system is maintained by all parties, whether it's the defense lawyers

00:23:41.360 or even the district attorney.

00:23:43.040 And if he fails to do that, he's not doing his job.

00:23:45.500 So I think that it's incumbent upon him to make sure that one way or another, we get to

00:23:49.940 the truth.

00:23:50.400 That's the thing, Phil, because you and I both know there are often bad facts for your

00:23:58.220 client that you would love to not air, right?

00:24:02.820 That you would love to just don't produce the document or don't answer the interrogatory

00:24:08.240 completely honestly.

00:24:09.860 You don't do it.

00:24:11.220 And why is that?

00:24:12.680 Because ethics are a part, a fundamental, important part of being a lawyer.

00:24:18.440 You either are going to be ethical or you're not.

00:24:21.860 And if you're not, you are not going to be an attorney.

00:24:24.960 Not for long.

00:24:25.760 They're going to catch you.

00:24:26.720 It's built right in there.

00:24:27.980 You learn it in law school.

00:24:29.080 Ethics.

00:24:29.380 There's a section on the bar exam about ethics.

00:24:31.760 You have to pass an ethical screening in order to actually get sworn into the bar because

00:24:37.020 so much of it does depend on attorneys and their duty of candor to the court.

00:24:43.840 You can hide things.

00:24:45.160 You can lie if you want.

00:24:47.180 If you're unethical, you can choose to go that way.

00:24:49.440 And it would upend the whole system.

00:24:51.360 So it's not just like, hey, it's office gossip.

00:24:54.500 Maybe I didn't tell the truth about my affair.

00:24:57.080 This whole thing has a much higher bar and more severe consequences and implications than

00:25:02.760 that, which is why I'm glad all these other authorities are looking.

00:25:05.840 The AG should be looking into this, even if, let's say, best case for Fannie, and she can 1.00

00:25:11.200 show the legal standard is actual conflict of interest, not just appearance, and that

00:25:15.920 the burden of proof is much, much higher than preponderance of the evidence, which is what

00:25:19.900 she's arguing in her latest motion.

00:25:21.920 She wants clear and convincing, which is a much higher standard.

00:25:25.480 And somehow she convinces Judge McAfee to do all that.

00:25:28.320 And he says, OK, there's a lot of smoke.

00:25:30.440 They couldn't prove fire.

00:25:31.920 I can't DQ her. 0.83

00:25:33.300 That can't be the end of the matter.

00:25:35.840 No, and think about this.

00:25:37.500 Now we've got the proffered testimony of Cindy Yeager, who is the chief assistant DA in neighboring

00:25:44.840 Cobb County.

00:25:45.580 Among other things, she says that she has personal knowledge that Fannie Willis herself called

00:25:53.160 Terrence Bradley.

00:25:55.140 She heard that, you know, at least half the conversation, and she says she's got enough

00:25:59.140 to know that it was Willis on the other end, stating, because she, I guess, recognized her

00:26:02.980 voice, saying, you know, they're owned to us.

00:26:05.780 You know, shut up.

00:26:06.660 Don't, and I'm paraphrasing, but she basically is now saying that Willis has told Bradley,

00:26:12.840 you know, keep your mouth shut. 0.61

00:26:14.420 There's no need to talk about us.

00:26:15.880 There's no need to talk about the things that you know.

00:26:18.140 Is that the impartial and fair administration of justice?

00:26:21.440 I think not.

00:26:23.040 And if she is going that far to the point of tampering with a witness, that could also

00:26:29.460 be a crime.

00:26:30.160 It's called influencing a witness.

00:26:31.720 And if it was done corruptly and with corrupt motives, that's a felony offense in Georgia.

00:26:37.160 Not to mention the fact that we now have a waiter in the nearby Marietta Square at a

00:26:43.740 restaurant who says that he saw Mr. Wade talking to Mr. Bradley within the last few weeks, despite

00:26:51.300 testimony to the contrary, what we're beginning to see a picture of is something very, very

00:26:57.080 deceitful, very dishonest, and very corrupt in the way that this case is being prosecuted,

00:27:02.660 way that's being maintained, and the way that the justice system, quite frankly, is being

00:27:07.940 administered in Fulton County.

00:27:09.240 And it really needs to be investigated and cleaned up, because if those things are true,

00:27:14.840 then something is very, very rotten in Denmark.

00:27:17.520 I'm Megan Kelly, host of The Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM.

00:27:21.580 It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and

00:27:26.460 important political, legal, and cultural figures today.

00:27:29.800 You can catch The Megan Kelly Show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you

00:27:34.740 may know and probably love, great people like Dr. Laura.

00:27:38.620 Glenn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megan Kelly.

00:27:44.040 You can stream The Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM at home or anywhere you are, no car required.

00:27:50.220 I do it all the time.

00:27:51.280 I love the SiriusXM app.

00:27:53.860 It has ad-free music coverage of every major sport, comedy, talk, podcast, and more.

00:27:59.580 Subscribe now.

00:28:00.280 Get your first three months for free.

00:28:01.640 Go to SiriusXM.com slash MKShow to subscribe and get three months free.

00:28:08.520 That's SiriusXM.com slash MKShow and get three months free.

00:28:14.280 Offer details apply.

00:28:15.480 There was an interesting admission by Ashley Merchant about the cell phone data, which,

00:28:25.020 as you point out, has not yet officially come into evidence.

00:28:28.400 The 10,000 texts, the 2,000 phone calls in 2021 before they were allegedly having the affair,

00:28:34.400 the location data showing him over at her house all the time, including two overnights at least.

00:28:39.920 She said, we had more, we had more, but we only submitted the most conservative ones that

00:28:45.060 were just so clear and that we had them sort of dead to rights.

00:28:48.920 She's like, if we wanted to cast a bit wider of a net, we could have, but we went, you know,

00:28:52.580 sort of the most conservative we could.

00:28:54.600 And she pointed out, because the state was like, they should have submitted this at the

00:29:00.260 hearing, that they submitted this too late and you shouldn't consider it.

00:29:03.460 And Ashley told them, we actually had only received the cell phone tracking data the morning

00:29:12.100 of the hearing.

00:29:13.220 And it takes a long time to go through these records, Phil.

00:29:17.340 So that was, I thought, a fascinating fact.

00:29:20.840 Yeah.

00:29:21.100 So that's a great point too.

00:29:23.060 And we've talked on your show before about compulsory process and how defendants have a right to

00:29:28.840 subpoena the production of evidence in their favor.

00:29:31.220 But one limiting factor that it's important for people to understand is that we can't just

00:29:36.920 have you send out a subpoena to bring something to my office next week.

00:29:41.400 You've got to list a court date.

00:29:43.900 In other words, there has to be a pending upcoming court date for which the evidence can be subpoenaed

00:29:50.580 to be produced at or for.

00:29:53.000 Okay.

00:29:53.260 So in this case, unless they have a hearing on the books that's calendared, you can't say,

00:29:59.100 hey, AT&T, just send me your stuff.

00:30:01.260 You've got to say, send it to us at that court date or bring it in person or whatever, but

00:30:06.980 you've got to comply with it.

00:30:07.960 That's your deadline.

00:30:09.020 So that means that you can only get it on that day.

00:30:11.980 And so we, as defense lawyers, or even if you're just a civil attorney in a civil case,

00:30:17.680 you've got to have some particular court date.

00:30:20.420 But in a civil case...

00:30:21.620 That was very telling.

00:30:22.560 I think, I really think, Phil, that rehabilitated the defense on those cell phone records entirely.

00:30:27.180 She wasn't allowed to send a subpoena to AT&T until they had the hearing date on the calendar.

00:30:32.740 As soon as they did, they did send the subpoena.

00:30:34.720 They got the data.

00:30:35.940 They only received it the morning of the hearing.

00:30:38.240 That's not something you just throw up on the court.

00:30:40.880 You need an expert to say, this is what all this data is showing.

00:30:44.920 It's hard to decipher.

00:30:46.800 I think that is the end of it.

00:30:48.820 He's going to allow those records in if he needs them, as you point out.

00:30:51.860 We'll see if he even needs them.

00:30:53.000 But that was, I thought, very compelling.

00:30:54.800 I didn't know any of that behind the scenes.

00:30:56.120 Okay, now I want to go back to the discussion we had about, was Terrence Bradley, you know,

00:31:01.640 town crier, Terrence Bradley, who was out there before he took the stand?

00:31:06.700 Extra!

00:31:07.540 Extra!

00:31:08.420 There was an affair.

00:31:09.580 It began before 2022.

00:31:11.900 They went to hotels.

00:31:12.980 They took trips.

00:31:14.120 He had her garage door opener.

00:31:15.920 Check out the old best friend.

00:31:17.420 That's where they did their stuff.

00:31:18.900 Okay, that Terrence Bradley did not take the stand.

00:31:21.120 And the question is whether he was threatened, whether what happened between town crier,

00:31:25.740 Terrence Bradley, and I know nothing, Terrence Bradley.

00:31:28.820 And she was asked, first of all, about Gabe Clark, right?

00:31:33.460 I think that's his name, Gabe.

00:31:34.620 Banks.

00:31:35.400 Banks, sorry.

00:31:36.340 Whatever, Banks.

00:31:37.900 And Gabe Banks did call Terrence Bradley.

00:31:40.800 And that was when they suspected Terrence was potentially talking to Ashley Merchant and

00:31:47.140 others.

00:31:48.220 She said she wouldn't describe it as a threat, but that Terrence Bradley called her afterward

00:31:54.000 and was upset.

00:31:55.600 They were trying to silence him, she said.

00:31:58.080 He said Gabe had not threatened him, but asked if he was her source, basically.

00:32:03.240 And then she added something I hadn't heard before.

00:32:06.880 The next day, Nathan Wade called Terrence Bradley's best friend and said that there was

00:32:15.580 that the call was to remind Terrence Bradley of the attorney client privilege.

00:32:22.460 She couldn't remember the name of this best friend.

00:32:23.900 She said he works at, I think, Beasley Allen, must be a law firm down there, you tell me.

00:32:27.820 But that was a second alleged interference, or you could argue witness tampering, but

00:32:34.760 I guess they didn't know he was a witness yet.

00:32:37.020 In any event, a second call to Bradley that we didn't know about.

00:32:42.600 Yeah.

00:32:43.120 And so if this turns out to be the truth of the matter, and we've talked before about

00:32:48.640 Ashley Merchant's not going to just put Terrence Bradley's name in a pleading and say Terrence 0.99

00:32:53.740 Bradley's going to come to court and he's going to say this, this, this, and this.

00:32:57.280 And shell down the corn, as we say here in the South, unless she had a good faith basis 1.00

00:33:02.520 for believing that.

00:33:04.180 So fast forward to the actual testimony, which was very, very different from what Ashley had

00:33:09.640 said that she expected it to be.

00:33:11.660 So then the question becomes why.

00:33:13.860 She was able to really answer that question and give us a lot of additional context.

00:33:19.460 We all sort of knew that there was more to it than just the text messages.

00:33:23.560 There was going to be conversations that they've had on the phone and even conversations that

00:33:28.780 they've had in person.

00:33:29.960 And to hear Ashley tell it to the Senate this morning, she believes that all that together

00:33:35.060 was perceived by Bradley as some type of a threat.

00:33:38.800 And if that's the case, yes, it does raise question about witness tampering.

00:33:43.420 In fact, the, uh, the chairman of the committee that was asking the questions today, he raised

00:33:48.160 that point, Ashley said she believes it was witness tampering and I'm, I'm summarizing

00:33:53.380 here, but, but now we are in a very, very different, um, type scenario where we've got,

00:34:01.460 you know, it's not just prosecutors who are potentially benefiting financially from the existence

00:34:05.380 of the case or from trying the case in the, in the pulpit of the, the local church.

00:34:10.380 Now we are in intentional malfeasance designed to, um, I guess, denigrate or to diminish the

00:34:19.480 integrity of the judicial system.

00:34:22.000 Well, this is the kind of place where prosecutors will get disbarred.

00:34:25.600 Here's the other thing.

00:34:27.380 Back to my alleged affair with Steve Krakauer, which isn't really a thing.

00:34:30.300 He's not a thing in any way.

00:34:31.940 He's my friend in my EP.

00:34:33.780 Um, if he got subpoenaed, you know, or let's say it's a third party.

00:34:38.440 Let's say it's you, Phil, and, and there, and you're like, they're having an affair.

00:34:42.020 They're having an affair.

00:34:42.740 They're having an affair.

00:34:43.600 And, and then, you know, you got called up to testify.

00:34:46.960 Steve and I wouldn't be calling you to say, Hey, remember your confidentiality obligations

00:34:51.000 to us.

00:34:51.800 You know, we'd be like, go ahead, take the stand, say whatever you're going to say.

00:34:55.420 It's not true.

00:34:56.700 The only reason Nathan Wade had the friend called Terrence Bradley to say, remember attorney

00:35:01.320 client privilege would be Terrence Bradley has some damaging things to say about Nathan

00:35:06.940 Wade.

00:35:07.380 And if Nathan's getting ready to go admit the affair, you know, the affair, I said, nothing

00:35:11.140 to be ashamed of.

00:35:11.900 It started after I got hired.

00:35:13.540 What was he afraid of?

00:35:14.960 The same thing that's making him not produce the texts from 2021.

00:35:18.560 He had something to hide.

00:35:20.760 That's why he needed Terrence Bradley to go silent.

00:35:23.700 And Terrence Bradley ultimately got the message.

00:35:26.020 All right, let's shift gear.

00:35:26.960 I do.

00:35:27.280 I want to talk about the judge for sure.

00:35:29.020 We have some viewer questions and I like this one, but then I also want to talk about the

00:35:33.260 potential funny business with the money and Nathan Wade.

00:35:36.760 Cause we got a lot more on that.

00:35:38.360 Ronald writes in, I would be very interested to hear about judge McAfee's judicial demeanor.

00:35:42.680 Is he considered a fair judge by people in the area?

00:35:45.580 I read that he had donated to Willis's election campaign.

00:35:48.780 So I wonder how fair he is.

00:35:49.860 Now we know that he, we talked about how he made a small donation, 150 to her, Fannie

00:35:53.760 Willis's campaign.

00:35:55.040 But as you pointed out to the audience before, they couldn't stand the other guy.

00:35:59.600 Most people there donated to Fannie Willis because the other guy was bad.

00:36:01.860 So moving on from that, tell us about this judge because my biggest fear that he's not

00:36:08.760 going to do this bill is Fulton County went 73% for Joe Biden.

00:36:13.580 He's running for reelection.

00:36:14.920 I realize he's more right-leaning, but this is a 73% for Joe Biden district.

00:36:20.840 How does he win election as a judge in this Fulton County by disqualifying a DA who the county

00:36:28.960 loves, the voters seem to love Fannie Willis, and it's very left-leaning.

00:36:36.220 I'm sure they can't stand Donald Trump.

00:36:38.260 How does he do?

00:36:38.960 How does it, how does he find the fortitude to do that?

00:36:41.780 Yeah, it's real simple because unless something's changed since we've begun this broadcast today,

00:36:46.660 he's running unopposed.

00:36:48.360 So he was appointed to fill a vacancy on the court by Governor Kemp, you know, last year.

00:36:53.440 In fact, when this indictment was returned, he was randomly assigned to this case.

00:36:58.220 He had only been on the bench a few years, excuse me, a few months, I should say.

00:37:02.360 So we, in the legal community, nobody really knows much about him.

00:37:05.580 He's an unknown commodity, so to speak, in that sense.

00:37:09.000 But we have seen his judicial temperament.

00:37:12.000 He's very, very low-key.

00:37:13.440 He does send, I think, some signals about what he might be thinking, but we don't have

00:37:18.980 much of a track record to be able to compare our intuition with what he's ultimately going

00:37:24.000 to do in the end.

00:37:25.500 So he's a bit of an enigma in that sense.

00:37:27.500 But if he makes it through the day after tomorrow and nobody qualifies to run against him, he's

00:37:34.100 going to smoothly sail, I should say, to re-election or election, because this will be his first

00:37:39.580 time here coming up in the nonpartisan primary here in Georgia in just a couple of months.

00:37:46.100 So if we get past this week, that's why I think that two weeks is a good length of time

00:37:53.520 to think about this and to be able to make a ruling.

00:37:55.380 But it also gets you past the qualifying phase of the Georgia election.

00:37:59.920 So that's how he's going to stay in his office, no matter how he rules.

00:38:04.700 Okay.

00:38:05.080 I heard something about that.

00:38:06.300 I thought it was just a primary opponent he was trying to stay away from.

00:38:09.380 But you're talking about if he gets past two weeks without somebody else throwing their

00:38:12.820 hat in, he's running unopposed.

00:38:14.400 He's basically a secure to re-election.

00:38:16.240 That's it.

00:38:16.720 Yep.

00:38:17.260 It's a nonpartisan primary for judges.

00:38:19.340 Even though he's appointed by a Republican governor, he doesn't declare a party affiliation

00:38:23.740 for purposes of the judicial race.

00:38:26.200 Okay.

00:38:26.840 Very interesting info.

00:38:27.920 Okay.

00:38:28.380 Here's another thing.

00:38:29.920 Paul Sperry, who's done a bunch of investigations and is a good reporter, posted this on X the

00:38:36.780 other day, developing an Atlanta lawyer familiar with Judge McAfee's thinking, says he's reluctant

00:38:44.300 to disqualify DA Fannie Willis because he's worried ruling would, quote, spill over to every

00:38:50.720 other indictment she has signed.

00:38:52.980 Now, I don't know whether that's true, but Paul is a legit guy.

00:38:58.280 And that picks up on the thing you and I discussed after the hearing where Judge McAfee was zeroing

00:39:05.100 in on if she lied, if I find she lied, how bad is it going to get?

00:39:12.400 Right?

00:39:12.620 And we played this soundbite of Sadow, Trump's lawyer, being like, it's about the oath in

00:39:18.920 this case.

00:39:20.020 But you could see the judge was like, oh, shit.

00:39:23.220 If I basically say this district attorney is a liar, how ugly is the hornet's nest?

00:39:29.460 You know, I think I responded to that tweet by Mr.

00:39:32.680 Sperry, and I expressed this.

00:39:36.620 You know, I don't really think that that's the case.

00:39:38.920 I don't know that anybody is going to be familiar enough with his, the judge's thinking

00:39:44.340 to be able to predict with any degree of confidence, you know.

00:39:48.120 So it's not like the judge is going to telegraph to any lawyer or anybody else, you know, what

00:39:51.940 he's going to do.

00:39:53.300 Maybe his law clerk, and that's going to be about it.

00:39:56.300 So I'm skeptical that that's the case.

00:39:59.060 Now, I do think the judge is concerned about it.

00:40:01.040 But look, as I said in my response to Mr.

00:40:03.200 Sperry's tweet, the judge asked hard questions of both sides.

00:40:06.980 And it's a legitimate thing to wonder, look, if I disqualify Willis from this case, what

00:40:11.780 does that do to all the other thousands and thousands of cases pending in the Superior

00:40:16.100 Court of Fulton County right now that have her name on the indictment?

00:40:19.380 And as I've said before, I believe this is the, he's just going to have to let the chips

00:40:23.280 fall where they may.

00:40:24.520 If it calls into question her credibility, so be it.

00:40:26.880 But listen, at this point, Megan, she's got bigger fish to fry than the cases pending

00:40:31.340 in the Superior Court.

00:40:32.180 As Ashley Merchant said today to the Senate hearing, she's got to worry about her law 0.94

00:40:36.860 license.

00:40:37.380 She may have to worry about being prosecuted. 0.99

00:40:39.520 Yeah, she's got bigger fish to fry, for sure. 1.00

00:40:42.040 Okay, a couple of things.

00:40:42.880 I just want to point out, Melissa wrote in saying, my question for you is, do you think

00:40:47.520 we'll ever hear from Nathan Wade's ex-wife?

00:40:50.260 I feel like she'd really have some thoughts, maybe even evidence.

00:40:53.640 I kind of wonder if the ex-wife could have been involved in bringing the affair or trips

00:40:56.740 to light outside of just what was learned in the divorce proceedings before they were

00:41:00.020 sealed, do you think her camp might have tipped off Ashley Merchant to investigate?

00:41:03.820 As we pointed out, Melissa, we learned today that it was Terrence Bradley who kind of tipped

00:41:07.500 off Ashley.

00:41:08.660 It really wasn't Jocelyn Wade, his ex-wife.

00:41:12.400 Another viewer had written in saying, this is Sean, why can't Fannie and Nathan's texts be

00:41:19.060 subpoenaed?

00:41:20.360 I mean, I think that's the thing you were pointing out.

00:41:22.180 As defense attorneys, you have limited options to get things like that.

00:41:25.740 You'd really need an extraordinary order from a judge to get, you know, to go the level

00:41:30.980 of you have to turn over your texts or an outside entity looking into possible crimes

00:41:36.180 like perjury.

00:41:37.120 So it could still happen.

00:41:38.940 OK, and now I want to get to the questions about his money and shenanigans alleged with

00:41:44.200 the money.

00:41:45.100 First of all, there was a lot made about the fact that why was he even necessary?

00:41:49.860 There are plenty of DAs and assistant district attorneys in the DA's office.

00:41:53.760 And she said Terrence Bradley called her and said, why do they even need outside counsel

00:42:00.860 to come in on this case?

00:42:01.780 Like he was wondering why Nathan Wade got brought in.

00:42:04.680 They talked about how Nathan Wade had only done misdemeanors, I think prosecuted misdemeanors.

00:42:10.840 I think he's defended, if I'm correct me if I'm wrong, felonies.

00:42:14.000 But everyone thought he's never prosecuted a felony before.

00:42:17.140 So why would you bring him in?

00:42:19.400 And then there was testimony that the district attorneys in her office, the ADA's, I think,

00:42:23.160 are making $175,000 a year, which that's amazing.

00:42:27.360 When I graduated law school, the DA's in Manhattan were making $35,000 a year.

00:42:32.760 Now I'm an old lady, so it's been a long time.

00:42:35.640 But anyway, the point is they're nowhere near what Nathan Wade is making, which in two years

00:42:40.800 he made over $700,000.

00:42:42.620 So it's over $350,000 a year he's getting.

00:42:46.020 And she did testify once and for all, he is getting paid more than the other special prosecutors.

00:42:53.940 Here's a bit of that in SOT 21.

00:42:55.220 There's two other on this case particularly.

00:43:00.480 There's a lady named Anna Cross and a gentleman named John Floyd.

00:43:04.140 And John Floyd has worked with the DA's office for many years.

00:43:07.880 But that case, John Floyd had also helped craft the indictment.

00:43:11.680 And, you know, he's sort of known as a go-to person for racketeering cases.

00:43:16.360 So the district attorney would regularly call on him.

00:43:19.120 Did you review their billings?

00:43:20.300 I did.

00:43:20.880 I reviewed their billings.

00:43:22.080 Stark contrast.

00:43:23.280 So Mr. Floyd, for example, he was only paid at a rate of $150 an hour.

00:43:29.100 Same case.

00:43:30.020 Same case.

00:43:30.840 More experience and expertise in RICO cases.

00:43:33.740 I mean, everybody would agree.

00:43:34.760 I think that John Floyd is one of the preeminent experts on RICO.

00:43:38.460 Did he have to submit itemized invoices?

00:43:40.880 He did.

00:43:41.440 And his were very different.

00:43:43.020 His were significantly reduced.

00:43:45.020 And the difference, the big difference was he billed for the time that he was working

00:43:49.600 on the case, not necessarily like eight hours for team meetings.

00:43:53.260 Did he have itemized billings?

00:43:54.920 Very much so.

00:43:55.780 Now, Anna Cross was paid $250 an hour. 1.00

00:43:58.120 Anna Cross is very well-known, very experienced appellate, federal lawyer.

00:44:01.620 They were the same rate.

00:44:02.700 They were $250 an hour.

00:44:03.680 But they were much lower bills, not anywhere near the bills that Mr. Wade did.

00:44:08.720 She had a lower cap.

00:44:10.200 So she and Nathan got $250 an hour.

00:44:11.920 The other guy, the most experienced RICO guy, got $150 an hour.

00:44:15.480 But Floyd and Cross had lower caps than Nathan Wade, who was the least experienced of all.

00:44:20.640 And who you heard it said there, unlike the other two, Nathan Wade had, she said, a funny

00:44:27.700 way of billing for his time.

00:44:30.280 These block summaries of like eight hours on the case, as opposed to how all lawyers have

00:44:36.800 to do it, which is itemized billing.

00:44:38.260 You know, five-minute phone call with client, 10 minutes on brief, 20 minutes conference

00:44:43.880 with judge.

00:44:44.820 That's how you have to bill it.

00:44:46.380 And here's, before I get your way in, Phil, a little bit of Ashley talking about that problem

00:44:50.500 with the way Nathan Wade has been billing the taxpayers in this case, SOT 20.

00:44:54.960 You asked earlier about the authorization, that stamp that says, OK, to pay.

00:45:02.020 I believe that's Dexter Bond's signature.

00:45:04.520 So that was one where, you know, Ms. Willis didn't approve it or didn't review it, at least

00:45:10.340 as far as we know from the signatures.

00:45:12.120 But this is, this billing is not something that you would normally see.

00:45:16.220 All right.

00:45:17.780 Well, I'm noticing this, the day and just a number of hours, there's no real itemization

00:45:24.620 of exactly how much time you spend doing whatever type of task.

00:45:28.260 Right.

00:45:28.560 There's none at all.

00:45:29.520 This is just an example, Bill, about the way he billed the county?

00:45:33.980 Oh, completely.

00:45:34.580 I mean, this is, you would never see this.

00:45:36.380 This is what I would call block billing.

00:45:39.320 So it's, I mean, one of them, for example, it's 28 hours over the course of two or three

00:45:43.660 days.

00:45:44.520 Most of his billing is meeting with team, team meeting, team investigation, team brain drain.

00:45:50.320 He called it different things like that.

00:45:52.720 All right.

00:45:53.340 So, Phil, zoom out and explain to the audience what they are trying to show us with all that.

00:45:59.180 Well, so a tenth of an hour, so 0.1 of an hour is six minutes.

00:46:03.220 And so typically lawyers will bill in the smallest increment that they can because, look, I don't

00:46:09.740 really do a lot by an hour, but if I did, my clients would flashback my bills and say,

00:46:15.940 okay, why are you billing, you know, in eight hour increments to do research on this issue

00:46:20.880 or that issue?

00:46:21.620 Because it just doesn't make sense.

00:46:23.880 What Ashley is raising here is an issue that, honestly, the County Commission, Fulton County

00:46:29.980 Commission is looking into this.

00:46:32.060 Some of the commissioners are demanding that Willis, you know, justify all this practice

00:46:37.520 because it's very, very non-standard.

00:46:39.420 This is just not how DA's offices operate.

00:46:42.440 So Ashley is raising the issue, you know, is there theft going on?

00:46:45.480 Is this actual theft of taxpayer dollars?

00:46:49.020 And so not only is the Senate looking at it, the County Commission's looking at it, the

00:46:52.580 court may look at it, but at a minimum, this tells the other prosecutors, I think, in

00:46:59.480 their, in her office, the full-time assistant DA's, look, I don't trust you.

00:47:04.580 You don't, I don't think you're able to do this.

00:47:06.440 And it brings the morale all the way down to the floor.

00:47:09.860 The morale in the DA's office in Fulton County is, has not been good for quite some time,

00:47:15.100 but I have it on good authority that people who work there look at this arrangement and

00:47:20.360 they are offended.

00:47:21.560 They feel like they are being slighted.

00:47:23.580 Are you telling me that you're going to bring in this outside lawyer that you happen to

00:47:27.720 be sleeping with and you're going to pay him $250 an hour, $700,000 over the course of a

00:47:34.040 couple of years, and I'm making $150,000, $170,000?

00:47:38.180 Are you kidding me?

00:47:39.040 This is not the kind of message that you want to send to your line prosecutors who, quite

00:47:44.280 frankly, you shouldn't hire them to be felony prosecutors if you don't think they can prosecute

00:47:50.160 a felony, including one like this.

00:47:52.280 It's okay to bring in outside consultants here and there, but this type of over-reliance

00:47:57.360 on independent contractors is so outside the norm of how prosecutors' offices run.

00:48:03.000 Look, even the independent counsel at the federal level, Jack Smith, he pays a salary.

00:48:08.860 He doesn't bill by the hour, and there's a reason for it, because it avoids things like

00:48:13.380 theft of time or even the appearance of stealing time and stealing taxpayer dollars.

00:48:18.460 This was an extreme misapplication of, I think, her good judgment.

00:48:25.220 I think that this was terrible judgment on her part, and it really does nothing to advance

00:48:30.040 the quality of prosecution in Fulton County, and it only destroys morale.

00:48:36.220 You can see the argument coming together.

00:48:39.040 I mean, I could easily do a closing argument against Fannie Willis as follows. 0.70

00:48:44.080 She was in debt.

00:48:45.320 She described herself as broke.

00:48:47.040 She had a tax lien against her.

00:48:49.620 She hired her boyfriend at an exorbitant rate that wasn't paid to the other two special

00:48:54.200 prosecutors who had far more experience than he did.

00:48:57.560 Once she brought him on board, she allowed him to run herd without any accountability on

00:49:04.120 the number of hours he was actually spending on the case.

00:49:08.160 She did not go through his bills with a fine-tooth comb because she did not want to find any errors.

00:49:12.500 She said the people responsible for overseeing his bills were the payment processing people who

00:49:20.400 literally just stamp, okay, she stamps okay to pay, and they just mail the check. 0.99

00:49:25.460 There was no independent review of his hours or whether he'd actually done the work.

00:49:30.980 Why did she do all of that? 1.00

00:49:32.760 Because she wanted to go back to the Bahamas. 0.92

00:49:36.200 She wanted to go to Aruba.

00:49:38.960 She wanted to see Napa and the world, which she did and almost got away with, had it not been for a

00:49:46.660 little conversation between his former best friend and Ashley Merchant representing one of the

00:49:52.300 defendants in this case, and then to double down on their bad behavior, they took the witness stand

00:49:57.720 and lied about it, violated their oaths as attorneys and their oaths as witnesses to tell the truth to

00:50:05.100 this court.

00:50:05.560 They perpetrated a fraud on the court and on the county, which is why they should not only be booted

00:50:11.020 off of this case, but they should be booted out of office, period.

00:50:14.560 And if you don't believe me that Nathan Wade has a history of lying, look at his interrogatory answers

00:50:22.480 in his divorce proceedings.

00:50:24.220 And if you don't believe me that he would do funny business when it comes to money, let's take a walk

00:50:30.280 back to that divorce proceeding and take a look at how he was allegedly handling money, or more

00:50:36.600 accurately, according to Ashley Merchant, potentially hiding money from his soon-to-be ex-wife.

00:50:43.360 Here's the soundbite on that SOT 40.

00:50:46.480 Some of the documents you produced to us, there were a couple of IOLTA trust accounts.

00:50:52.320 Those were Mr. Wade's accounts?

00:50:54.760 Yes.

00:50:55.260 And did you find any discrepancy or whether these funds were deposited there?

00:51:02.720 Yes.

00:51:03.200 At first, he deposited them to his joint IOLTA that he had with his law partners,

00:51:08.580 and then he started depositing them to his personal, when I say personal, just him, IOLTA.

00:51:14.300 An IOLTA that did not have anything to do with Mr. Bradley or Mr. Campbell.

00:51:17.840 His ex-wife didn't have any idea. 0.99

00:51:20.100 I mean, you could tell from the pleadings that he was even making this much money.

00:51:23.120 I mean, he filed some interrogatories and some answers in that divorce case saying that he

00:51:28.980 made a couple thousand dollars a month.

00:51:30.940 I mean, very, very minimal amount.

00:51:32.240 And he has a lot of money parked in one of those IOLTAs that's not disclosed in the divorce.

00:51:35.720 As much as I wish we could park money in our IOLTAs that was earned and not pay ourselves,

00:51:40.560 we can't do that.

00:51:41.900 So when you earn money, you can't leave it in your IOLTA.

00:51:45.620 We should point out today that Nathan Wade, according to Ashley Merchant today, testified

00:51:49.580 at that hearing.

00:51:51.000 He basically just gives these accounting issues to his accountant and lets him take care of them.

00:51:58.080 And we didn't hear from Nathan Wade directly yet in front of this Georgia State Senate

00:52:02.080 proceeding.

00:52:02.780 So keep an open mind on what his defenses are to these charges.

00:52:06.140 That's all they are at this point.

00:52:07.440 I understood exactly what she said, and it was bad.

00:52:10.040 But please, Phil, explain it to the audience because nobody's ever heard of IOLTA.

00:52:13.980 Yeah, it's interest on lawyers' trust accounts.

00:52:16.920 That's what Georgia calls the attorney's escrow.

00:52:19.100 Anybody who's ever purchased a home, for example, and used an attorney to close the loan has,

00:52:24.500 whether they realize it or not, they've dealt with a lawyer's escrow account.

00:52:28.520 It's typically the kind of place where you're going to hold money that doesn't really belong

00:52:33.160 to you, but it's in your name as a lawyer.

00:52:35.480 It's different from our business operating account that we pay our employees and pay ourselves out of.

00:52:40.520 It's where you hold proceeds from settlements.

00:52:42.700 It's where you will hold money that your client may be paying that you're going to need for an

00:52:47.800 expert witness in a case, or it may be your own retainer fee that you have not yet earned

00:52:53.060 because you haven't done the work if you're billing by the hour or something along those lines.

00:52:57.520 But it's not the kind of place when you earn money.

00:53:00.340 I mean, I guess you could park it if you wanted to in your IOLTA or your escrow account.

00:53:04.840 But if you do that and you don't declare it as earned income, that's a tax issue.

00:53:09.880 But it also probably violates the rules that the state bar has put up in terms of how lawyers

00:53:15.460 are supposed to use their escrow accounts.

00:53:17.700 It's not a business operating account.

00:53:19.300 But what Ashley was saying to the Senate committee was that Wade was essentially parking it there

00:53:24.560 in order to perhaps hide it from his wife in the divorce or even to perhaps hide it from

00:53:30.000 his business partners, which at one time included Bradley.

00:53:33.920 You know, and so this could be.

00:53:35.440 She said it's my understanding that was one of the reasons their firm broke up.

00:53:39.600 Keep going.

00:53:40.120 That's the biggest thing that people in the law business break up with each other over is money.

00:53:45.320 That's the biggest thing that that drives law firms apart when partners leave.

00:53:50.140 And so it makes perfectly good sense to me that it could be an issue over money.

00:53:54.440 And so another interesting thing was that each of these lawyers who were in supposedly

00:53:59.760 this firm, they had their own individual escrow attorneys, escrow accounts, in addition to

00:54:05.180 one that maybe they were all involved with.

00:54:07.960 There's nothing per se wrong with that, but it's certainly very unusual.

00:54:11.500 And it's not the kind of law firm that we traditionally think of when we hear about these things.

00:54:18.040 This is not good.

00:54:20.140 They should have just admitted it.

00:54:21.980 They should have just said, we did it.

00:54:24.000 We fell in love.

00:54:25.520 But he was her third choice.

00:54:27.920 He wasn't hired for this reason.

00:54:30.220 And you know what?

00:54:31.440 For the sake of justice, we'll resign.

00:54:34.020 Like he definitely should have said, I'll step down.

00:54:35.640 And she then, if forced to, at this point, should say, I'll step down.

00:54:39.080 There's no, this is going to be so bad for them.

00:54:42.000 We're talking about bar cards being possibly revoked.

00:54:45.280 Felony.

00:54:45.880 That word's getting banged around.

00:54:47.700 Georgia investigation.

00:54:48.660 The U.S. Congress is taking a look at this.

00:54:50.980 If there's any funny business with the money, now they're going to find out about that, too.

00:54:54.560 I mean, this is a nightmare for these two over something they could have avoided if they'd

00:55:00.380 just been honest that they did something colossally stupid up front when they got caught.

00:55:05.500 Phil, you're the best.

00:55:06.520 You're so good.

00:55:07.440 Thank you so much for all the insights and all this.

00:55:09.800 And please come back the next time we have news, which will probably be in about two minutes.

00:55:13.380 Yeah.

00:55:13.760 At this rate, it could be any time.

00:55:14.980 And always, thank you very much for having me.

00:55:16.920 It's a story that's not going away, and I'm sure we'll talk again soon.

00:55:20.780 We'll look forward to it.

00:55:21.840 And thanks to all of you for joining me and us today.

00:55:24.840 If you have questions yourself about this Fannie Willis case or any other thing, please keep

00:55:30.000 the feedback coming.

00:55:30.740 You can email me directly at megan, M-E-G-Y-N, at megankelly.com.

00:55:36.140 I love reading them.

00:55:37.120 It's fun to go through them.

00:55:37.900 We've gotten some great questions.

00:55:39.280 We actually had some more.

00:55:40.040 We haven't gotten to them all, but we will.

00:55:41.920 We'll continue answering your questions over the coming days, because as you know, this

00:55:44.600 case isn't going anywhere, at least not in a couple of days that we have ahead of us.

00:55:48.780 Love reading it all.

00:55:49.700 See you tomorrow.

00:55:55.260 Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show.

00:55:57.060 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

00:56:05.860 Thank you.

The Megyn Kelly Show - March 07, 2024

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

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript