Fani’s ‘personal relationship’ sinks her and her office

[Julian]

It was a bad, terrible, not very good day in court for the Fulton County DA


Fani Willis, the district attorney for Fulton County, Georgia, went down
in flames on Thursday. A crematorium wouldn’t have been more efficient.
Her angry, self-righteous defense added a load of fossil fuel to the
conflagration.

It happened at a judicial hearing before Judge Scott McAfee, who is
presiding over the election-interference case Willis brought against
Donald Trump and eighteen codefendants. The district attorney charged
them with acting jointly to overturn the 2020 US presidential election.
Her basic allegation is that they conspired to add bogus votes to
Trump’s total so they could flip the state’s electoral vote. Then, a
slate of false electors, pledged to Trump, would certify he had won the
state.

Willis bundled these allegations and charged the entire group, many of
whom had never met, with violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations Act. The defendants counter-sued to remove Willis and her
office from the case. Their biggest goal is to have the entire case
dismissed.

Trump and his codefendants assert that

The ‘specialist’ Fani Willis hired to lead the prosecution had no
qualifications for such a complex, difficult case and that Willis really
hired Nathan Wade because he was her boyfriend;

DA Willis then paid her friend Wade more than $650,000 so far; two other
specialists were also hired, one a RICO expert; those two, together,
have received less than $100,000;

Willis benefited financially from hiring Wade since the two took some
seven vacations together in the US and abroad; all the expenses were
charged to Wade’s credit card; the allegation is that he could pay for
these excursions only because her office had paid him so generously;

Both Wade and Willis made false declarations to courts, denying they had
a romantic, sexual relationship, denying she had hired him before that
relationship began, and denying she received any benefits from Wade or
others

Those incendiary charges were the topic of Thursday’s hearing. Judge
McAfee said he would deal separately with another serious allegation:
that Willis had influenced a potential Atlanta jury with her
inflammatory speech to a local black congregation. Yet another charge —
this one a felony — was only hinted at. Did Willis or her office leak
grand jury proceedings to journalists?

When Willis took the stand Thursday, her response was ferocious. In
long, filibustering answers, she not only rejected all allegations, she
smeared the defense counsel, saying the questions were really trying to
undermine democracy. (Wade, who testified before her, was much calmer.
When he finished, Willis stormed into the courtroom, surprising
everyone. She never calmed down.)

Willis said that Wade was merely her friend when she hired him. Their
romantic relationship only began a couple of months later. Second, she
never benefited financially from their relationship. Although they had
taken multiple vacations together, she had always covered her half of
the costs. When asked if she had any proof that she had made those
payments, she declared she had always paid Wade in cash. Her word was
all the proof she needed, she said.

What about the forms state employees such as Willis are required to
submit concerning any outside benefits? She hadn’t submitted any, she
said, because she always paid her own way. Again, she always paid in
cash. Like any district attorney who wanted to avoid the appearance of
impropriety.

Naturally, defense attorneys asked Willis where all this cash came from.
She kept it at home, she said, but offered no explanation for the source
of this horde. That’s a puzzler since she receives her salary as an
electronic payment and has no record of withdrawing cash from an ATM or
other source. Nathan Wade has no records of receiving or depositing any
cash from her.

The question of hypocrisy also lingers over the affair. When Willis was
running for office, she assured a television interviewer she would never
have sex with anyone who worked “under her.” (That might not have been
the best phrase.) Her current explanation is that Wade didn’t work under
her. He was simply a contractor she hired.

Fani’s bad day didn’t start with her testimony or even Wade’s. It began
earlier, with testimony from Robin Yeartie, Fani’s friend of thirty
years (now a former friend), who later worked in the DA’s office.
Testifying under oath, Yeartie says she saw Willis and Wade give clear
evidence of their romantic relationship before November 2021. That’s
important, if true, because that’s before the two say their affair began
and before Willis hired her friend.

As DA, Willis has full authority to hire outside attorneys and pay them
generously. The problem arises only if she received personal (corrupt)
benefits from her decision. That’s what makes Thursday’s testimony such
a problem for Willis, regardless of when she began the affair. After
Wade began work for her, the two went on expensive trips together and
cannot prove they split the costs. The question whether Willis acted
corruptly is underscored by her decision to hire an attorney who spent
his career dealing with small cases.

Most of the damaging information that came out Thursday stems from a
nasty, ongoing divorce case between Nathan Wade and his wife of
twenty-six years, Joycelyn. When Nathan began his romantic relationship
with Fani Willis, he was separated but still married. That’s how
Joycelyn managed to get hold of the credit card statements showing the
expenses for Nathan and Fani’s jaunts together. Joycelyn has said she
was nearly penniless while Nathan was spending lavishly and hiding their
joint income.

Last week, just before the divorce court was scheduled to hear the
husband’s explanation and possibly his mistress’s, Nathan reached a
financial settlement with Joycelyn. Still, he paid a high price for the
delay, beyond any financial costs.

First, in the divorce proceedings, Nathan swore that he had not had any
outside relationship during the marriage and had not spent money on such
relationships. Oops. When it became clear that these declarations would
be scrutinized in the RICO courtroom, Nathan amended his sworn
statements, first in December 2023 and then again in January 2024.
Instead of admitting anything, however, his amended response was a
refusal to answer. (The effect was the same as the Fifth Amendment,
though Wade used a different Georgia law.)

The other cost was the entanglement of the extramarital affair with the
RICO case, thanks to a very competent attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, who
is representing Mike Roman. Merchant and Roman hope to remove Willis and
her office from the prosecution, which would delay the case for months,
perhaps years, as it was handed to a new prosecution team from another
Georgia county. The new team might decide not to prosecute, if Judge
McAfee hadn’t already ended the case.

The district attorney has yet another problem — and it’s a serious one.
If she made false statements under oath or funneled public money to a
boyfriend and then benefited from it, Willis could face discipline,
disbarment or even criminal charges.

What about a presidential pardon to end the case if Trump is elected? It
can’t happen. Presidents can only pardon for federal offenses, and this
case isn’t one. It is being brought under Georgia law. The governor, a
Republican, can’t do anything either. Unlike most states, Georgia only
permits pardons after a convicted felon has served five years. The state
legislature is under pressure to change that law.

The evidentiary hearing will continue in Judge McAfee’s court, but the
case against Willis is building. The appearance of corruption and
impropriety is obvious. That won’t necessarily end the case, but it is
more than enough to end Fani Willis’s participation in it.

She tried to incinerate Trump and tumbled into the inferno.


Charles Lipson

[Noah Sombrero]

On Fri, 16 Feb 2024 13:12:12 +0000, Julian <julia...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>It was a bad, terrible, not very good day in court for the Fulton County DA

Your guys would think that. Regardless, there is nothing for it but
to wait for the judge to decide. The rest is speculation and
sensation and tending to other people's business. In any case, I bet
the judge knows what really is going on, don't you?

--
Noah Sombrero

[Noah Sombrero]

On Fri, 16 Feb 2024 13:52:53 -0500, Noah Sombrero <fed...@fea.st>
wrote:

>On Fri, 16 Feb 2024 13:12:12 +0000, Julian <julia...@gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>>
>>It was a bad, terrible, not very good day in court for the Fulton County DA
>
>Your guys would think that. Regardless, there is nothing for it but
>to wait for the judge to decide. The rest is speculation and
>sensation and tending to other people's business. In any case, I bet
>the judge knows what really is going on, don't you?

A big part of the case seems to allege that expensive trips to
vacation spots were paid for by him. She says that she paid half. So,
since when do romantic partners keep such scrupulous track of their
date time expenses? And since when should anybody but himbo care?