Why Fani Willis Should Be Removed from the RICO Case
Fani Willis was seeping piss and vinegar as she took the stand. Initially poised, she confidently requested that three pleadings be placed before her for reference as she testified. After a brief recess to get her those documents, she made it known very quicky that she was there to do battle.
As Michael Roman’s defense attorney, Ashley Merchant, began questioning DA Willis, it took Willis no more than 60 seconds to call Merchant a liar. She said she was surprised the hearing to have her, and by extension her office, removed from the case was allowed to continue.
For the next several minutes, she continued to call Merchant a liar.
Within 5 minutes Willis had shed the initial poise she had displayed altogether. This time speaking directly to the judge, “It’s highly offensive when someone lies on you, and highly offensive when they try to implicate you slept with somebody the day you met them, and I take exception to it,” accompanying that last bit with a finger pointed toward the judge.
Mmm-hmm. I wonder how others who feel they are innocent and Willis has accused of attempting to steal the election feel about that. But I digress.
When Willis began offering details beyond the questions, Merchant asked the judge to intervene. The judge responded by giving Merchant permission to treat her as a hostile witness and to ask leading questions. The state objected and Willis interjected by saying, ” I very much want to be here so I’m not a hostile witness. I very much want to be here.”
The judge responded, “It’s not so much that you are hostile, Miss Willis, it’d be an adverse witness. Your interests are opposed to Miss Merchant’s.”
“Miss Merchant’s interests are contrary to democracy, your honor, not to mine.” she clapped back.
Forty minutes into Willis’s testimony, she came unglued. When Merchant asked Willis if Wade had ever visited Willis at, “the place you laid your head,” Willis reacted emotionally. “Let’s be clear because you lied in this… Let me tell you which one you lied in, right here,” as she began holding up the documents she had asked to have placed before her. “I think you lied right here.”
One of the defense attorneys began to object and Willis quickly responded in a way that could only be described as an outburst. “No, no, no, no! This is the truth!” Holding up all three of the documents she yelled, “IT IS A LIE! IT IS A LIE,” tossing the documents down on the surface in front of her to signal her disgust.
At this point the judge intervened calling for a five minute recess, assumably, to regain order in the court room.
Immediately after the proceeding resumed, Merchant asked Willis, “how often did Mr. Wade visit you in a place where you were living between 2019 and 2021?”
Instead of answering the question Willis resumed her indignation by responding, “so you want to start with the lie that he lived with me in South Fulton in 2019? A home he’s never been to? That’s one lie you told in your document.”
At one point, her hand trembling, she looked at the judge and still refused to answer the question directly, qualifying her answer by restricting it to just her home in South Fulton in 2020. The judge responded to Willis by telling her if this kept happening over and over that he would have no choice but to strike her testimony.
At one point, Willis told the court, “I do not consider our relationship to have become romantic until early in 2022… I’m saying some time between February and April of 2022.” Emphasis mine. Both Willis and Wade also testified that Wade had never spent the night with her at her Hapeville condo, more on that coming up.
I learned a long time ago that when someone qualifies their statements in this manner they are trying to deceive you. The person that couches their statements this way may not believe they are lying, but they certainly are not trying to give you a straight answer. I do not consider. Please. We are not stupid.
When I sat down to write this post, news hadn’t yet broke that Nathan Wade’s cellphone records and geolocation data had been gathered from AT&T and showed a staggering amount of interactions between Wade and Willis in 2021. More on that in a second. I had already seen enough, before the news broke, based on how Willis handled her testimony to come to the conclusion that she is operating from a place of emotion and not from a place that is objectively analytical of the facts.
Those she has accused of crimes deserve to have a clear headed prosecutor. The State of Georgia, who she represents, deserve the same thing. And from the beginning of this case she has shown a jaw dropping lack of judgement to the point that she was prohibited by the court from prosecuting Burt Jones because she hosted a fundraiser for Jones’s political opponent. The judge called it a, “What are you thinking moment.”
What are you thinking? It’s reminds me of how my Papaw would react anytime I would do something stupid as a child. Even 35 years later, remembering those types of reactions from him cause me to feel a pit in my stomach. A physical manifestation of the embarrassment I felt, nay, still feel because I clearly had let him down. It’s a powerful rebuke.
It’s Fani Willis’s combination of poor judgement and lack of ability to prosecute this case from anything other than a place of emotion that should be enough to disqualify her from moving forward with the case. Give it to another prosecutor who isn’t hamstrung by these self inflicted wounds. Because even if Trump and his codefendants are found guilty in this case, which I still believe won’t happen, too many members of the public will point to her gaps in credibility to accept the verdict as legitimate.
At that point all we would be left with is more Americans questioning the legitimacy of our institutions.
And that’s where this post would have ended if not for the breaking news I mentioned above. So let’s take a look at what happened today, which appears to have added a significant amount of gasoline that is the forest fire of Willis’s credibility.
Phone records, which were submitted to the court today, showed 2,073 voice calls and 9,792 text messages between Willis and Wade from January 1, 2021 and November 30th 2021. The vast majority of them were concentrated after business hours. There is no one in my life I have had that much communication with, although I would bet my mother wished I had contacted her that many times in 11 months.
Perhaps most damning is that the data show that Wade visited Willis over night at her Hapeville Condo 10 times before he was hired in November of 2021. Remember, Willis testified that Wade had never spent the night and that she did not consider her romantic relationship to have started with him until between February and April of 2022.
Wade was not hired as a Special Assistant District Attorney (SADA) on the case until November of 2021. Never mind that he had never prosecuted a RICO case before this one. One very significant pillar in Merchant’s filing to have Willis removed from the case is that the romantic relationship started well before Wade was hired. The implication is that he was hired because he was Willis’s boyfriend, and then she benefited from Wade’s financial windfall when he paid for her expensive vacations. This provides a financial incentive to keep the case going for as long as possible, thus the claim of conflict of interest.
Although Willis now claims that she paid Wade back in cash, she can point to no written proof those transactions ever occurred. A state employee, on direct deposit, who testified she doesn’t have checks, and no ATM transactions to back up the claim. Oh, yeah, with a $4000+ tax lien to boot. I mean, we are not stupid. If this was a civil asset forfeiture case, the Sheriff is taking that money.
So now the judge is not only going to have to determine if Willis should stay on the case, he’s going to have to decide if Willis and Wade perjured themselves. Which leaves me with a question for my friends in the legal profession, who prosecutes a prosecutor for perjury?
It. Is. A. Mess. And someone better wrestle the broom away from Fani now, because she cannot be allowed to be the one who tries to clean it up.
“South Fulton”….I saw your reference, Scot, to presuming/assuming that when Ashley Merchant asked about Fani living in “south Fulton”, Merchant meant “City of South Fulton.”
But, as you aptly pointed out, the City of Hapeville is “in” the southern part of Fulton County.
So, the question becomes: Was Merchant referring to any home located in “South Fulton” where the “South” refers to the entire geographic area of the southern part of Fulton County (much like “North Fulton” refers to many cities and areas of a boundary line in Fulton County that is north of the city limits of the City of Atlanta), OR was Merchant referring to any residence located in the City of South Fulton?
If Merchant was referring to the southern part of Fulton County, then Fani did commit perjury on just that question alone as the incorporated City of Hapeville is located in the southern part of Fulton County.