A new report from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution indicates that the romantic relationship between Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and fellow prosecutor Nathan Wade may have begun much earlier than the two claimed in sworn testimony last week, bolstering claims by former President Donald Trump and other defendants that the election interference case against them is irreparably compromised.

Willis hired Wade in November 2021 to help her prosecute the Trump RICO case involving nearly 20 total defendants. Co-defendant Michael Roman and his legal team presented evidence last month that Willis and Wade had been more than just business associates while preparing the case and that they even had taken lavish pleasure trips together on the taxpayers' dime, creating a conflict of interest.

Willis filed a motion on February 2 denying that her "private" former relationship with Wade gave her any "direct or indirect financial benefit" and therefore that she had "no personal conflict of interest that justifies her disqualification," as Blaze News previously reported.

Then at a hearing to consider the matter last week, Willis and Wade both took the stand to defend their behavior. Both Willis and Wade claimed that they developed a romantic relationship in spring 2022, several months after they had begun working together on the case, and that the relationship ended last summer.

During his testimony, Wade claimed that while he did visit Willis at her condo in the Hapeville neighborhood in a non-romantic capacity in 2021, he went there no more than 10 times and never stayed the night.

"So if phone records were to reflect that you were making phone calls from the same location as the condo before Nov. 1, 2021," Trump attorney Steve Sadow asked, "and it was on multiple occasions, the phone records would be wrong?"

"If phone records reflected that, yes, sir," Wade replied.

"They’d be wrong?" Sadow asked again.

"They’d be wrong," Wade repeated.

However, a new affidavit submitted by Trump's legal team on Friday suggests otherwise. According to the affidavit, which Geraldo Rivera described as "an earthquake," between January and November 2021, Wade had visited Willis' Hapeville home at least 35 times and had twice come over late at night and left in the wee hours of the morning.

The allegations are based on data collected from Wade's cellphone. The data indicated that on each of these 35 occasions, Wade remained at Willis' residence for "an extended period of time," almost always in the evening. For example, data reportedly showed that Wade arrived in the area of Willis' address at 10:45 p.m. on September 11, 2021, and left the area at 3:28 a.m. the following morning. He then returned to the area of his residence in East Cobb at 4:05 a.m.

In all, the data collected from Wade's cellphone reportedly demonstrates that he and Willis exchanged over 2,000 phone calls and nearly 10,000 text messages in 2021 before Willis hired Wade for the Trump election case, the Journal-Constitution reported.

"The focus of this case will continue to shift rapidly away from Trump and his co-defendants and hit squarely on the credibility and possible perjury of the prosecutor," Rivera opined on social media.

"This is exactly why you don't want your emotionally distraught client to take the witness stand under oath to defend their character."

However, some still say that the cellphone data is not definitive proof of misconduct. Georgia Tech electrical and computer engineering professor Paul Steffes — who "reviewed a summary of the investigation included in the affidavit," the AJC reported — claimed that the data indicates only that Wade was within an area, about nine square miles in size, that includes Willis' condo.

Former DeKalb County District Attorney Robert James was likewise skeptical that the data contradicted the former couple's respective testimonies. "The real question is whether there was proof there was a romantic relationship at that time," James said, "and I don’t think this proves there was. It just proves a relationship, which they’ve already acknowledged."

Judge Scott McAfee, who will determine whether to disqualify Willis and her office from the RICO case, has yet to decide whether to accept the affidavit into evidence.

Jeff DiSantis, a spokesperson for Willis, issued the following statement on Friday: "We are required to respond to the filing via the court and we are preparing a response now."

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