Donald Trump keeps racking up legal victories as his haters keep getting more desperate.
Desperate enough to put Stormy Daniels on the stand in New York, committing what will be a reversible error if Trump is found guilty. After Daniels’ performance in court yesterday no appeals court would uphold a conviction.
BREAKING: Georgia appeals court grants Trump’s request to consider whether Fani Willis should be disqualified in his criminal case. pic.twitter.com/VgSSugSeoq
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) May 8, 2024
Legal scholars like Alan Dershowitz expected the judge’s decision to bounce Nathan Wade and not Willis, but they also believed that Willis should have been disqualified along with Wade. The decision was legally questionable and nothing more than a scheme to punt the decision-making to a higher court.
That decision appears to have been a smart move on McAfee’s part, preserving his chances of getting reelected. His decision surely wasn’t based on the applicable law, given that Willis’ credibility was utterly destroyed.
JUST IN: The Court of Appeals for the State of Georgia on Wednesday agreed to consider former President Donald Trump‘s appeal of a judge’s decision not to remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from prosecuting his sweeping racketeering case. https://t.co/szh6TFzuEp
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) May 8, 2024
The Washington Post’s story laid out the arguments for the decision:
“It is neither prudent nor efficient to require the courts, the parties, or taxpayers to run the significant and avoidable risk of having to go through this painful, divisive, and expensive process more than once when an existing structural error can be remedied by this Court now,” the filing stated.
Trump and the others also argued that McAfee erred in not disqualifying Willis over remarks she made in a Jan. 14 speech at a historic Black church in Atlanta where she suggested that the criticism of her and Wade was racially motivated. McAfee called Willis’s speech “legally improper” but also said it was unclear if her remarks had met a legal standard for forensic misconduct by a prosecutor.
In an April 8 response, Willis asked the appellate court to block the appeal and defended McAfee’s ruling, arguing the judge “found the evidence insufficient to establish any actual conflict of interest.”
The Appeals Court won’t hear the arguments until August according to the trial docket (via the Washington Post), almost guaranteeing that Willis’ witchhunt will be delayed until well after the election.
This is, needless to say, huge. The whole point of the exercise was to tie Donald Trump up in court for months during the height of the presidential campaign.
Willis has likely poured gasoline on her career and lit a match. She likely committed perjury, clearly violated legal ethics, and is looking like a fool. Were she not a female minority her career would be over.
Willis’ defense of her and Wade’s actions were largely predicated on playing the race card, as you recall.
JUST IN: Fani Willis accuses cross-examination of racism, says she’s not going to emasculate a black man. WATCHpic.twitter.com/hsPvS6SViv
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) February 15, 2024
The Stormy Daniels antics in court yesterday signify a modest shift in lawfare strategy: since there is no legal basis to convict Trump successfully without reversal, the goal is now to humiliate him.
I doubt that will work.