When Ethics Alarms first published a commentary related to the unfolding Fani Willis scandal, it was under the headline, “Since the Media is Sure to Report This Major Ethics Story As Late As Possible If At All, I’m Going To Risk Commenting On It Too Soon…” That was a week ago, and it is now clear, though not definitively proven, that indeed Willis did hire her adulterer boy freind as one of the prosecutors on her Trump case, that she has benefited from it personally, and that she has a fatal conflict of interest that will eventually require her removal from the case, probably bar sanctions, and perhaps even criminal charges. Willis using a church appearance to try to shift the issue to racial persecution by the Evil Right was a fairly obvious indication that the allegations in a court filing are true; so is that fact that neither Willis nor her “great friend” have denied the allegations, which would be the obvious move if the scandal was imaginary. Nonetheless, as I expected, the news media is still slow-walking the story, and the usual Trump-Deranged suspects among law professors, legal ethicists and lawyers are trying hard to muddy the water so the public sees the facts as right wing conspiracy-mongering and unethical attacks on the righteous pursuers of their idol.
Mark well those lawyers, ethicists, pundits, professors and publications that try to defend Willis. They have told you, and everyone paying attention, that bias has either made them stupid, or that they are willing to lie “for the greater good.” They are untrustworthy, in either case.
The Hill, for example, issued a standard “Republicans pounce” story about Willis today. Here’s a representative passage: “Salacious accusations that Fulton County (Ga.) District Attorney Fani Willis (D) hired a romantic partner as a top prosecutor in former President Trump’s criminal case have given new fodder to attacks from Republicans as well as Trump and his co-defendants.” Here’s another: “But Greene and other Trump allies have nonetheless latched onto the revelation, using it to bolster their claims that the former president’s prosecution is politically motivated.” Nowhere in the report is an explanation of why the alleged–we’ll still say “alleged,” I suppose, until all the damning facts are out—conflict of interest matters, why it disqualifies Willis and Wade from the Georgia case, and why not just Republicans but anyone who insists on the integrity of the justice system should want them gone, or even what a conflict of interest is.
Well, now we know The Hill can’t be trusted to provide straight news without partisan spin. That’s useful.
Similarly, Norman Eisen, a Brookings scholar and legal ethicist, Richard Painter, W.’s former ethics counsel, and Joyce Vance, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama under Obama, beclowned themselves in this deceitful op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constituion. Their theme: it won’t matter if Willis and Wade have a conflict of interest, because the case against Donald Trump is legitimate and their conflict doesn’t change that. I’m stunned that any of the three would make such an untenable and dishonest argument, though Painter, I suspect because he is part of the Bush contingent who vowed vengeance on Trump from the moment he attacked Jeb and George, has been out to “get” Trump from the moment he was elected.
Shan Wu, a former federal prosecutor who served as counsel to Clinton Attorney General Janet Reno authored a similar spin-fest for The Daily Beast called “Calm Down, the Allegations Against Fani Willis Won’t Put Trump’s Georgia Prosecution at Risk.” Wu shrugs off the conflict of interest this way: “The motion’s legal theory is defective because at most the allegations amount to an HR personnel issue.” Wow. Has he ever read the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct, the ABA’s prosecutorial conduct ethics guidelines, or the definition of “appearance of impropriety,” which government attorneys must avoid at all costs?So now we can cross Wu’s name off our “experts we can trust” list. That’s helpful.
Fortunately, another, trustworthy lawyer persuaded the Daily Beast to publish his clear and accurate rebuttal to Wu, Painter and the rest. (We know he’d still love to nail Trump because his essay is titled “Why We Can’t Just Shrug Off the Fani Willis Scandal.”) I’m especially grateful because the Atlanta criminal law specialist saved me the trouble of typing out the same explanation. Andrew Fleischman wrote yesterday in part,
In 2022, Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney disqualified Fulton County from presiding over the prosecution of Lt. Governor Burt Jones because Fani Willis endorsed his political opponent, Democrat Charlie Bailey. In the order, the judge notes that there was an “actual” conflict of interest. This “does not mean that… Jones has definite proof that an investigative decision was made explicitly to benefit candidate Bailey. This rarely, if ever occurs… the conflict is actual because any public criminal investigation into [then-]Senator Jones plainly benefits Bailey’s campaign, of which the district Attorney is an open… supporter.”The standard to disqualify Fulton County here is not whether Fani Willis actually made her decisions to benefit Nathan Wade. It’s plausible that she would have made the exact same choices without the personal relationship. But if her choices to extend or prolong the investigation benefit a romantic partner, who is paying for her meals and vacations, that is an actual conflict.When a Georgia judge was found having sex with a public defender outside the courthouse, the courts did not hesitate to find that this undisclosed sexual contact required new trials for the accused, even if it might have arguably been to their benefit.Just as here, the guilt or innocence of those accused was irrelevant. The conflict of interest required a new trial.So what happens next? Judge McAfee has stated his intention to hold a hearing in February to look over the truth of these allegations. If they are true, the case will not be dismissed, but it is likely that he will disqualify Fani Willis, which, under Georgia law, will require disqualifying her entire office. The case will then go to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, which will decide who the case can go on to next…But even if everything goes as smoothly as humanly possible, it is difficult to imagine trying the former president before the November election. And it’s also possible the case may go to someone who will choose to dismiss it.
Exactly! This isn’t hard. Fleischman finds it necessary to point out that if the allegations in the filing are false, they won’t affect the case at all. Duh. I supposed that’s to keep the Beast’s all-woke readers from rending their garments prematurely by giving them a ray of hope. But the article also includes a provocative fact I had not read elsewhere: “Wade filed papers to divorce his wife the day after Fani Willis hired him.”
A coincidence, I’m sure.
Since he is a Georgia lawyer focusing on a Georgia case, Fleischman doesn’t mention what this scandal will do to the other political prosecutions against Trump. The revelation that Wade met for several hours with White House staff—and billed the state for his time!—strengthens the claim that the prosecutions are political “lawfare.” Republicans will “pounce” on that, and they ought to.
Ethics Alarms 
“And it’s also possible the case may go to someone who will choose to dismiss it.”
Since this is Georgia and not New York this is perhaps more likely than not. Georgia isn’t a totally red state, but it’s at best purple. And if the Governor gets a say, he may have a desire not to see his state beclown itself further.
I have to say that, if rational thought had prevailed, and the DAs hadn’t filed charges until they had an actual, solid case against Trump that most people could accept, a scandal such as this wouldn’t matter. The case would be reassigned and it would go on to its just conclusion. But, she couldn’t resist ginning up some trumped up charges (pun intended) to get He Who Must Not Be Allowed To Govern.
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Actually the pun could end up a real thing. With some historical distance, all these persecutions could create an alternate definition to the term trumped up. The law of unintended consequences strikes again.
There’s a Gordian knot here, and it’s one we’re going to continue fighting with for a very long time.
Fani Willis said in her statement:
“First thing they say. Oh, she going to play the race card now? But no. God, isn’t it them who’s playing the race card when they only question one?”
There are competent black people in existence. This is so obvious that it shouldn’t need typing, but Democrats have been so interested in getting in representation regardless of the mediocrity of the candidates that it feels like every time a scandal like this asserts itself, we’re almost invariably criticizing a black person. More, because of the attention of the media, a disproportionate amount of attention gets placed on these cases.
It’s almost impossible not to label these people DEI hires. They tend to have light resumes, their conduct speaks for itself, and the moment they catch whiff of criticism, they reference their melanin and/or their sexual organs.
Look at Claudine Gay… We were told that the reason she was being scrutinized was because of her race and gender. It was in the statements from Harvard. It was in the statements from her. Google it, they’re still saying it.
Meanwhile, reality is that she was being scrutinized because of her politics (Politics which were enough to get Liz Magill fired from the University of Pennsylvania without even a sniff of plagiarism… But Magill is white, so her departure was swift and barely made the news cycle.). And while being scrutinized for her politics, the people looking to do Gay damage found obvious plagiarism, which was finally deemed enough cover to follow through with what Harvard’s donors were demanding.
The narrative that we’re being sold is that the reason she got fired is racist sexism, when in reality the reason she was hired, and then the reason it took so long to fire her, was sexist racism.
Now, Fani Willis is an elected DA, and so the base qualification is really just “50%+1”, but she is a lawyer, she was an ADA for 16 years, she was in private practice, she was a judge for a couple years. She seems, on paper, to be qualified. But competent is different than qualified, her actions speak for themselves, and the very first statement she made very quickly referenced her melanin and sexual organs:
https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2024/01/15/read-fulton-county-da-fani-willis-improper-relationship-charges/
What are we supposed to do with that? Say, “Well, she’s black and has a vagina, so even though I hate her politics, and even though she fucked up, and even though I wouldn’t think twice about commenting on this were we talking about a white dude, maybe I’ll sit this one out.”?
I don’t think this is designed, necessarily, I think that Progressives really are interested in shoehorning in as much diversity as possible… But I do think this is considered, and counted on. If progressives thought for a second that these scandals were actually hampering their future prospects, I think we’d see fewer of these scandals because they’d put more effort into the selection process. But I think between media complicity, voter apathy, and the reality that shouting about racist misogyny still carries some weight among some populations, they think (and they’re right) that they can continue to do this and get away with it.
Comment of the Day (it’s up.) Also: on my legal ethics listserv, pretty much including the whole universe of those in the field, not one participant has mentioned the Wallis matter, and I get 10-30 emails a day from this group. It is almost 100% Trump-Deranged, and those few who are not apparently are reluctant to incur the enmity of a group that is otherwise helpful an invaluable for resources and input of perplexing ethics issues.
This depresses the hell out of me.
And the drip…drip…drip…continues. It is being reported that Wade met with the J6 Commission and was allowed to see evidence that the J6 Commission denied to the DOJ.
So…meet with Biden about the case..check.
Meet with the J6 Commission about the case…check
No political motivation here.
And yet pundits are desperately insisting that Wallis’s corruption (if true) won’t have any effect on the Georgia case or the other prosecutions. I think that’s whistling past the graveyard, and that it will also lose Biden a lot of votes in November. As it should.