Fulton County, Georgia, Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee’s decision is one fine muddle.
McAfee ruled on Friday in the Fani Willis-Nathan Wade sexual-kickback case: It takes two to tango, but only one is too corrupt to stay on the dance floor.
How does that work?
McAfee gave Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis the option to continue her election-interference persecution against former President Donald Trump, but only if she booted Wade, her lead prosecutor and former boyfriend/high-flying travel companion.
McAfee’s ruling only makes sense if Willis and Wade conducted their torrid love affair with Wade awake and Willis comatose. Not even Helen Keller would have been so oblivious of events in which she was, literally, intimately involved.
“It’s like finding two people in a bank vault and taking one off to jail,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told Fox News. “They were the two parts of this relationship, and only one of them was disqualified.”
Turley added: “Why should Willis escape that same penalty? The opinion leaves us feeling like the court went and shot the wounded.”
The decision should have been either: Wade and Willis are clean. So, proceed. Or Wade and Willis are crooked. So, you’re fired!
Instead, McAfee ruled: Willis is clean, and Wade is crooked. So, she should stay or leave with Wade, as she wishes. Whatever.
Huh?
McAfee’s pretzel logic might involve his reelection in two months. Perhaps by leaving Willis some wiggle room, McAfee reckons he can tiptoe around the land mine that would have exploded had he disqualified Willis and blown this case and himself sky-high.
This underscores the urgent need to eliminate all judicial elections and make local, county, and state judges like federal jurists; namely, appointed by executives, confirmed by legislators, and unbeholden to voters. Justice cannot be blind while shaking hands and kissing babies.
McAfee might have ruled 100% on the law and evidence and 0% on his own political prospects. And yet he is on Fulton County’s May 21 ballot, according to his election website.
Thus, speculation stirs that McAfee’s decision was a self-serving campaign stunt. Such thoughts, justified or not, corrode confidence in a justice system already sinking into a quicksand of public doubts.
Meanwhile, Trump’s attorneys responded to McAfee.
“While respecting the Court’s decision, we believe that the Court did not afford appropriate significance to the prosecutorial misconduct of Willis and Wade, including the financial benefits, testifying untruthfully about when their personal relationship began, as well as Willis’ extrajudicial [Martin Luther King] ‘church speech,’ where she played the race card and falsely accused the defendants and their counsel of racism,” declared Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead counsel in the alleged election-interference prosecution. “We will use all legal options available as we continue to fight to end this case, which should never have been brought in the first place.”
These “legal options” most assuredly involve appeal motions. Wiser jurists might return a more rational result, perhaps based on McAfee’s finding that there was at least the appearance of corruption in this case. In legal matters, appearance alone tends to be sufficient to jettison parties too tainted to remain in place. Appearance should be enough to dismiss Willis, now that Wade has resigned in disgrace.
No less a Trump hater than Andrew Weissmann, a former Justice Department Deep Stater, considers Willis too crippled to continue. As he commented via X: “For the good of the case, given that ethics issues will abound now as to Willis, she should voluntarily recuse herself from the case and allow another prosecutor to oversee the GA trump [sic] case.”
Willis cannot stand in court and challenge the propriety of Trump and 18 other co-defendants without the entire country—and the jury—thinking: “Go look in the mirror!”
And now, this circus moves on to appellate court. Whatever other judges decide, these appeals will take time. And right now, time is Trump’s best friend.
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