The lesson of Fani Willis: Don’t hand Team Trump any sticks with which to beat you | Opinion
The judge overseeing the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump has decided not to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for making the reckless and wrong decision to mix her work and personal lives.
Too much was at stake for her to have taken that chance by becoming romantically involved with her lead prosecutor, Nathan Wade, either before or after hiring him. Now she can only stay on the case if Wade steps down, and that seems like a sensible middle-ground decision.
For those of us who believe that Trump should be held to account for pushing officials to “find” just enough votes to overturn his 2020 loss in Georgia, the judge’s finding that Willis can still prosecute him is a relief.
But this whole diversion from what the former president said in that taped phone call we’ve all heard is also a reminder: If you’re going up against someone like Trump, whose legal team will find and exploit any vulnerability, the margin for error is nonexistent. You aren’t allowed any mess-ups.
I’ve always thought about this sideshow exactly what I thought in response to Hillary Clinton’s comments about the “vast right-wing conspiracy” against her husband in another century. Of course his adversaries were after him, which is why he couldn’t afford to hand them any sticks with which to beat him.
The idea that Willis benefited financially from her relationship with Wade was always ridiculous, and quite a throwback, too.
As a highly successful professional, she could afford to go anywhere she wanted without hiring a man to take her on vacations and out to dinner. As she said on the witness stand, “A man is not a plan.”
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee said as much in his decision: “The financial gain flowing from her relationship with Wade was not a motivating factor on the part of the District Attorney to indict and prosecute this case.”
“While a general motive for more income can never be disregarded entirely, the District Attorney was not financially destitute throughout this time or in any great need, as she testified that her salary exceeded $200,000 per year without any indication of exceptional expenses or debts.”
What’s more, he wrote, the Trump team “failed to demonstrate that the District Attorney’s conduct has impacted or influenced the case to the Defendant’s detriment.”
It was the appearance of a conflict of interest that was a problem, McAfee wrote, and that, too, makes sense.
The Trump team thoroughly failed to prove, he said, that “the financial arrangement was an incentive to prolong the case. … There is no indication the District Attorney is interested in delaying anything. Indeed, the record is quite to the contrary.”
It’s Trump who was looking for a delay, and got one.
In this and other cases against him, he’s definitely winning on that front, rather than on the substance of the charges against him. Trump and his co-defendants in the Georgia case will not now go on trial this August as planned, and quite possibly won’t go on trial in any of the criminal cases against him before the election.
But then, we never could count on the courts to save us from a second Trump presidency.
Though I believe that Trump, like anyone else, should be held to account for all of his illegal acts, our criminal justice system does not and never has treated everyone equally. Donald Trump has gotten special consideration all along, especially from Biden’s timid attorney general Merrick Garland, who apparently hoped to avoid the messiness of prosecuting a former president.
But don’t we all know that it would be far better for our already fragile democracy if we voted to keep this world-class grifter out of the White House rather than relying on our judicial system?
Of course, if we do decide to reelect Joe Biden instead, Trump will still say he won, and his ensorcelled followers will still believe him, too.
We can’t change that, but can decide whether we keep the republic. And if we do want to keep what we have, then it’s up to us to convince those mewling about a “plague on both your houses” that staying home in November is not an option.
This story was originally published March 15, 2024 at 10:49 AM.
