State Rep. Stacey Evans was hours into one of the busiest days of the legislative session when her phone lit up with text messages.
“Well, there was a Stacey Evans mention at the Fani Willis hearing,” read one.
The Atlanta Democrat was well aware of the all-out push by defense attorneys for Donald Trump and his allies to derail Fulton County’s election-interference case. But Evans was “baffled” her name was dragged into the nationally-watched hearing on Tuesday.
A few weeks earlier, Evans had been subpoenaed by Ashleigh Merchant, an attorney for one of the 15 remaining codefendants. Evans promptly told Merchant she didn’t know anything about the case and that she would fight a subpoena while the Legislature was in session.
Evans suspected why her testimony might be sought. She and her husband Andrew owned a law office in Midtown where Willis rented office space a few years earlier.
And Evans heard of the “ridiculous” rumors flying around that she had walked in on Willis having sex with special prosecutor Nathan Wade. Their relationship is at the heart of Trump-backed efforts to disqualify Willis from the case.
“I didn’t know they were dating, I’d never known them to date,” Evans told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “So if she is sending me a subpoena because of that, then I don’t have faith in whatever case they think they have.”
Merchant never followed up on that subpoena. Which was why Evans was stunned when the defense lawyer invoked her name during a Tuesday hearing as she grilled Terrence Bradley, a former Wade law partner.
Hundreds of text messages between Bradley and Merchant obtained by the AJC reveal why Evans was in the mix. On Feb. 2, Bradley sent a text to Merchant asking if she knew Evans, who ran for governor in 2018. She responded that she didn’t.
Three days later, Merchant asked Bradley if she heard a rumor about Evans’ husband Andrew husband walking in on Wade and Willis. “Can’t I just subpoena him?”
Bradley wrote he wasn’t sure “which one” and suggested that Merchant not be “too direct” in trying to deduce the information. Evans’ husband Andrew, who is on Wade’s legal team, also said the rumor was a lie.
In the interview, Stacey Evans told the AJC she was so infuriated that she left the Capitol and walked a few blocks to the courthouse to condemn the rumors under oath. But prosecutors felt there was no need to call her to the witness stand after Bradley testified.
Still, Evans said she was “apoplectic” that her name was brought up in a hearing targeting Willis.
“The idea that someone I consider a strong, badass female lawyer is getting raked through the coals based on rumors and gossip made me want to set the record straight.”
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