Georgia Judge Does What He Needed to Do
As we expected, Judge McAfee, the judge overseeing the Georgia Racketeering case, ruled today that the romantic relationship between DA Fani Willis and her chief prosecutor Nathan Wade did not avoid the appearance of conflict while not technically violating the law. He gave her the choice that either she or Wade had to go. He talked extensively about Willis’ poor judgement in a case this important and her unprofessional behavior during testimony. Wade resigned a few hours later. Legal experts are saying that this debacle almost assures that the case will unlikely go to trial before the election.
As I said before, this is 100% Willis’ fault. What she did was stupid, but exceptionally stupid when she was going after a former president of the US. The carelessness is breathtaking. In another slow moving disaster, the NY hush money case was delayed today for at least 30 days because, after a YEAR of waiting, the SDNY US attorney’s office dumped 150,000 pages of evidence that DA Bragg had requested. TFG’s lawyer asked for a 90 day delay but the judge delayed for 30, but that will surely be appealed.
So, with a big assist from the Trump-Thomas SCOTUS when they rewrote the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, it looks like TFG’s going to win by running out the clock. Add that to TFG’s handpicked judge in Florida slow walking the documents case and that’s almost a certainty. What’s infuriating is that Garland, the NY DA, and Fani Willis dragged their feet so long that we’re now up against the election and it’s almost certain that no trial, much less a verdict, will happen before the election. Garland sat on his ass for almost two years before he was shamed into prosecuting Trump only after the Select Committee on January 6th produced a warehouse full of damning evidence of insurrection. He also KNEW TFG was sitting on thousands of government documents, 800 of which were classified TOP SECRET, but waited 21 months to finally do something. Because of that negligence and the stupidity on Willis’ part, we’re not going to get any justice before Election Day.
There’s a good chance TFG’s going to win the election, and if he does, the documents case and the election interference cases will certainly be dropped by his new AG. The NY hush money case and Georgia case will continue, but prosecuting a sitting president will be almost impossible, and the Trump-Thomas SCOTUS will make sure nothing happens. Fani Willis will probably lose her re-election bid and the new DA could just drop the Georgia case. But those aren’t the biggest problems – the biggest problem is that TFG will gut the DOJ and FBI, pardon the almost 1,000 charged or convicted insurrectionists, and undo all the progress we’ve made while Biden has been in office. He’ll pack the WH and his cabinet with criminals, white supremacists, and authoritarians, and it could easily be game over for the US as we know it. If by chance he loses the election, he most certainly won’t accept it and will call for civil war. There’s no good result here, and you can thank the Trump-Thomas Court, Merrick Garland, and Fani Willis. Thanks for nothing.
One wonders whether Putin will supply arms and “little green men” to Trump if he loses
1To quote Charlie Pierce, this is a case that should have been handled in chambers inside of 11 minutes. Men get away with much worse crap than this all the time. The outrageous spectacle of a public rummaging around the panties of a Black woman–an elected official at that–was disgusting. The judge out to be ashamed of himself to have allowed that at all.
I’m putting my hopes in Jack Smith and Judge Chutkan–assuming SCOTUS has a shred of decency left–to get to real case ASAP.
2“TFG’s lawyer asked for a 90 day delay but the judge delayed for 30, but that will surely be appealed.”
I’m not a NY lawyer, but generally speaking, scheduling matters like than are not subject to interlocutory appeal—in other words, they can only be appealed once the case has been tried.
3Scary, too, is Putin rooting for Drumpf to win so he can accomplish his goals in Ukraine and beyond. And that would be just a start to global chaos.
4I agree with BarbinDC that Jack Smith and Judge Chutkan will eventually prevail before or after the elections.
5There’s no guarantee that the former guy will win the election. There are many Republicans and independents against him. He’s also showing many signs of cognitive failure that will only increase as the elections near.
It’s a setback and I agree that Fani Willis should have been more careful to avoid any appearance of impropriety, but the truth will prevail eventually. It always does.
El Jefe, I think you outlined what many of us feel. Me for sure. I’ve felt for years that the idea of trumpf being held accountable has been wishful thinking. I try to be optimistic but as time and developments come in his many indictments, I lose my optimism. I won’t restate what you already stated but seems like unforced errors are plaguing most/all of them. About Merrick Garland, who thought he was going to do the right (just) things? He picked a special prosecutor (Trumpf appointed) that was the same person that wrote the Bill Barr response to the Robert Mueller report on the Russian interference and trumpf’s involvement in our 2016 elections. Mueller almost immediately said that response was completely inaccurate. Special prosecutor (not Ben) Hur was picked by Garland and allowed to put his completely false political thumb print on the Biden classified documents scandal. Instead of stating the obvious differences between trumpf’s case and Biden’s, he chose to highlight Biden’s age and memory. Again, false.
6Any other person who committed so many crimes would already be sitting in an orange jumpsuit in jail.
Barb@2 – You’ll have to pardon me for disagreeing about Fani Willis. Is it fair? Hell no. Was MacAfee wrong? Hell no. Willis was irresponsible to have a romantic relationship with an employee. It was fucking stupid to do it in this case. This is the most public state criminal case in US history and you had to know that the attorneys for the shitbags they represent would be looking with an electron microscope for any weakness and she handed it to them on a silver platter. It was careless. And supremely stupid. MacAfee is trying to minimize the defendants’ grounds for appeals. I’ll agree he let it go on much too long, but this whole scandal is 100% on Willis. Period.
7Fani Willis was brought down by a case of hubris. It reminds me of Gary Hart when he ran for president in 1987. He famously told the press “Follow me around. . . . I’m serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’d be very bored” when he was fooling around with Donna Rice. Why Willis would give TFG anything to use against her and her case is just bewildering.
8It seems to me that every time there has been a judgment call involving the DOJ that could have gone either way, it has *always* gone in Combover Crime Lord’s favor.
He drew a fan girl for a judge in the documents case.
SDNY, a part of the DOJ, took its time in handing over the documents in the hush money case, which they had to have known would result in delaying the trial.
Garland picked a Republican apparatchik to investigate Biden.
Did the DOJ do anything – anything at all – that didn’t help TFFG obstruct the coming of justice that is due him?
I’m not so sure he’ll gut DOJ if and when he takes office. It looks to me like they’re already in his pocket.
9It’s a kabuki dance. Def from Wikepedia: It refers to an event that is designed to create the appearance of conflict or of an uncertain outcome, when in fact the actors have worked together to determine the outcome beforehand.
Amongst the actors are Garland, Willis, Bragg, Cannon, and SCOTUS. When campaigning in 2020, Biden said he didn’t think it would be a good idea to prosecute a former president. Of course, this is before the insurrection and the stonewalling of stolen state secrets. Maybe they are just afraid to prosecute, fearing January 6th was only a dress rehearsal of what is likely to happen. If that is the case, then I guess we know who has won.
I still think that Ford’s pardon of Nixon helped to pave the way for lawless executive actions to go unprosecuted in the future. Reagan making a side deal with Iran on the hostages comes to mind. Would that deal have been executed if the players knew they could end up in prison? Would Trump have been as aggressive in overturning the election if there had been prior accountability? Who knows for sure, but if he gets away with this, we will become just another Hungary.
10I gotta agree with most, if not all, of you. This is so maddening none of us are sleeping well anymore. How does a whole country get behind such a corrupt criminal? (Well, half–) and how does our supposedly organized country’s mechanisms screw up everything? I really would like to torch Merrick Garland for his namby-pamby ways. It’s just like we got to hear: Obama plays the long game, Merrick Garland is weighing the options etc etc etc…Why do we believe anything we hear?? But I am not being swallowed up by MAGAcriminals without a fight. Also, WTF Fani Willis and the entire R judiciary system?????
11Just out of curiosity, which other state prosecutors have brought charges of election interference against TFG? Fanni Willis put her head on the chopping block, but I know of no other state prosecutors willing to do so. It seems hard to be angry at the single person willing to try to hold TFG and his cronies accountable because she has made some errors, after all shouldn’t she be encouraged to keep at it rather than chastised for all too human behavior (nobody’s perfect)?
A list of the good things Willis has attempted or accomplished so far (i.e. what she has done right) side by side to a list of her mistakes in the process (i.e. what she has done wrong) would help focus the decision whether to praise or condemn her. As best I can tell the number and character of the good things seems to heavily outweigh the bad.
full disclosure: I do not know Willis, nor anything about her other than what I have seem in the news stories about her case. I have no dog in this fight, other than a desire to avoid misplaced blame and aggression.
12I’m with Barb in DC on this.
13What Willis did or did not do has no bearing on the fact that drumpf is the guilty party and he is not the victim in any way,shape or form!
Those that blame Willis seem to be seeking an easy out for the most corrupt person in American politics.
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