At last, it seems the sordid saga of Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis and her underqualified special prosecutor/boyfriend, Nathan Wade, is finally coming to a close.
Although the options given to Willis on Friday by the presiding judge might not be what she hoped for.
Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee ruled that the district attorney must either step aside from her prosecution of former President Donald Trump or cut ties with her erstwhile lover, Wade, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
McAfee wrote in his 23-page ruling that “an outsider could reasonably think that the District Attorney is not exercising her independent professional judgment totally free of any compromising influences. As long as Wade remains on the case, this unnecessary perception will persist.”
Therefore, either she goes or Wade goes.
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While this is not the outright disqualification many think she deserves, it does provide Willis with a most interesting dilemma.
McAfee said he didn’t believe that either the witness testimony or the evidence presented by Trump’s lawyers was indisputable.
Even so, he ruled that the appearance of impropriety was enough grounds for the recusal of either Willis or Wade.
“After consideration of the record established on these motions, the Court finds the allegations and evidence legally insufficient to support a finding of an actual conflict of interest,” the judge wrote. “However, the appearance of impropriety remains and must be handled as previously outlined before the prosecution can proceed.”
Should the Georgia case against Trump be dropped altogether?
Even though McAfee disagreed with Trump lead attorney Steve Sadow’s judgment that Willis’ Jan. 14 speech at an Atlanta church — in which she accused her legal opponents of going after her solely because she was a black woman — was an example of forensic misconduct, he nonetheless upbraided her for the comments.
He said her speech served to “cast racial aspersions at an indicted Defendant’s decision to file this pretrial motion.”
While the judge dismissed several of the charges against Trump on Wednesday, he didn’t think the defense team’s claims were strong enough to warrant dismissing the entire case.
Thus, McAfee took a page from Mercutio’s book and declared “a plague o’ both your houses.”
Indeed, it’s hard to escape the impression that the judge is fence-sitting in his ruling Friday.
What’s especially odd is that even though both Wade and Willis appear to be in the wrong, only one of them has to go, in his judgment.
Why is the remedy to this appearance of impropriety that only one must leave the case?
The bottom line is the clearly politically motivated election interference case against Trump and his co-defendants will continue.
