“What were you thinking? The optics are horrific.” Thus, a Georgia Fulton County Superior Court Judge rebuked Fulton County DA, Fani Willis. It was July 2022 and the issue was Willis investigating then Georgia state Senator (now Lt. Gov.) Burt Jones and simultaneously throwing a fund raiser for his opponent, Democrat Charlie Bailey. Judge Robert McBurney disqualified Willis from Jones’ case.
That issue was relatively minor compared to newly unearthed accusations of Willis’ misconduct. Thus far, the allegations could result in the following violations: perjury, misuse of government funds, misuse of campaign funds, witness tampering, prejudicing a jury pool, and the Fulton County prohibition against supervising a person with whom she has a “consensual sexual relationship.”
The unraveling of Willis’ misconduct began during the hearing before Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee after Ashleigh Merchant (counsel for one of 18 Trump co-defendants Willis indicted for RICO, a state racketeering statute) filed papers claiming Willis had a conflict in the case because she had hired an unqualified prosecutor, Nathan Wade, as special counsel and paid him far more than the other two special counsels also working on the case. Moreover, the duo travelled numerous times to, among other places, exotic Caribbean beaches. If Willis was wined and dined by Wade using money he received after being hired by her, she has a financial interest. She benefitted from the hiring. If she hired someone who had never tried a felony case, her interests were in “conflict” with the county’s.
Willis claims she reimbursed Wade for the money he spent on their trysts. Their “who paid for what” explanations defy credibility. According to Willis and Wade, she repaid him in cash, which she always kept on her (“wherever I laid my head”) and he never deposited the cash in any bank account. How convenient. No record of either a withdrawal or deposit.
The hearing was just the beginning of Willis’ troubles. She and Wade filed affidavits claiming the relationship began only after the initial hire. That fact should be irrelevant because she renewed his contract while having the affair and she was from the initial hiring supervising a subordinate. Nevertheless, that’s what they stated in writing and later in oral testimony…both under penalty of perjury.
If Fani used federal/state/county (all were involved) funds to pay an unqualified Wade an excessive salary—at least $653,000 and perhaps as much as $1million—which they used to cavort in the Caribbean, she has misused government funds.
During her hearing testimony before Judge McAfee, Willis claimed that one source of her home cash was money from her campaign: misuse of campaign funds.
At least one witness, Cindi Lee Yeager, said Wade’s former divorce attorney Terrence Bradley told her that the relationship began before Wade was hired but Willis had told Bradley to keep it quiet: witness tampering.
Willis harangued in an all-Black church shortly after the affair became public that the attacks on her were “racist.” Atlanta, which is almost half Black, will have a jury pool reflecting that percentage. Willis responded to a lawyer’s question during the hearing as to why she opposed releasing certain of her travel records, that she was “not on trial.” While pointing to all defense counsel, she claimed that “these people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020.” It is unethical for a prosecutor to speak about a case or defendant outside the “four corners” of the indictment. Thus, she violated the code of professional ethics just as she did when she campaigned on targeting Trump.
One of the most respected Attorney Generals in our history, Robert Jackson, cautioned his Justice Department troops in 1940 that the “most dangerous power of the prosecutor” is “pick[ing] people he thinks he should get, rather than pick[ing] cases that need to be prosecuted.” Jackson continued: “[I]t is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him.”
And the latter is just what Willis did. In August 2023, she—a Democrat—indicted Trump and 18 others—all Republicans—on RICO charges for conduct never before considered criminal. (But for disqualification, Lt. Gov. Jones would have been another.) Basically, she indicted defendants for contesting the 2020 election by looking for voter fraud and/or setting up a set of alternate (not “fake”) electors, a perfectly legal process used by John F. Kennedy in Hawaii in 1960. Mark Meadows, Trump’s Chief of Staff at the time, was indicted for the mere act of making a phone call to schedule a meeting.
Georgia’s 2020 election was always suspect because the Trump-hating Republican Governor, Brian Kemp, made an illegal and unconstitutional deal with Democrat Stacey Abrams. Even though he had no authority to do so (only state legislatures can decide election procedures), Kemp agreed to mail out ballots to everyone on the voter registration list and that the ballots could be returned to unsecure drop boxes, a procedure fraught with fraud.
The problem was there was no remedy. After the votes were cast, the courts could not know which ones were invalid. So, the defendants were attempting to find other ways to expose election irregularities, hardly a basis for a RICO violation. (Conveniently, Kemp changed those election procedures when he ran in 2022.)
Willis was not thinking when she threw a fundraiser for the opponent of someone she was investigating. Nor when she hired her secret lover. Nor when she committed perjury and numerous financial crimes and prejudiced a jury pool. But she was thinking when she used lawfare against her political opponents. Because that was her goal.
Judge McAfee should disqualify Willis from the RICO case and Fulton County should fire her for violating its ethics code. More importantly, she should be criminally investigated for perjury and various financial crimes. Maybe next time she will think… before she acts.
Merrick Garland’s DOJ unconstitutionally and in violation of DOJ’s rules authorized a search warrant for all Victoria’s client information, costing us $500,000 to protect our clients’ privileged information. Givesendgo.com/diGenovaToensing
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