Willis: A prosecutor’s fiery defense
Fani Willis “sat in the hot seat like it was her throne and she was ready to slice off some heads,” said Robin Givhan in The Washington Post. The Fulton County district attorney, who has charged Donald Trump and others with conspiring to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results, was in court last week because those defendants are now trying to get her kicked off the case. They argue that her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she appointed, poses a conflict of interest, particularly because the couple took vacations together that appeared to have been financed by his $250-an-hour salary. Willis, who took the stand in surprise testimony delivered with “gobsmacking fury,” said she always reimbursed Wade in cash, handing him $2,500 for their trip to Belize, for example, and $400 for their California wine tasting. She even brought her father in to testify that he had raised her to use cash. “I’m not on trial,” she insisted, “no matter how hard you try to put me on trial.”
Yet when the DA “is on the stand discussing a getaway to Aruba, something has gone terribly awry,” said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Willis insists the relationship began after Wade’s appointment, but a former friend testified otherwise, and either way, it’s unprofessional. Worse, Willis said at an Atlanta church that she and Wade were being attacked because they are Black, allowing Trump’s lawyers to argue that she’s effectively prejudiced the jury by calling him racist. If this case “collapses in an ethical ash heap,” it will play into Trump’s claims that he’s “the victim of partisan prosecutorial abuse.”
Willis’ disqualification would make things “infinitely easier for Trump,” said Jeremy Stahl and Mark Joseph Stern in Slate. Republicans get to pick the new prosecutor and could delay the trial until after the November election. Even Willis’ “well-deserved umbrage cannot hide the fact that she screwed up,” said Robin Abcarian in the Los Angeles Times. Sure, she made a convincing case that her conduct doesn’t meet the standard for disqualification under Georgia law. But by engaging in a romantic relationship with a colleague, she handed her opponents “a backdoor way to stymie the strong criminal case against Trump and his supporters that took her office years to construct.” The entire country “may end up paying for her unforgivable mistake.”