OPINION:
Those seeking to deploy the legal system against former President Donald Trump have once more been exposed as the actual lawbreakers. The Georgia “election interference” case against Mr. Trump has gone off the rails thanks to the mendacity of Fani Willis, Fulton County’s district attorney.
Judge Scott McAfee last week concluded that “the established record now highlights a significant appearance of impropriety that infects the current structure of the prosecution team.” Nonetheless, he overlooked the potential perjury committed in his courtroom to allow Ms. Willis to remain on the case.
On Monday, Mr. Trump’s attorneys sought permission to allow a higher court to review this curious outcome. Nearly three days of testimony involving witnesses, travel receipts and GPS records showed Ms. Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade, the lead attorney on this case, had an affair, which has since ended. More significantly, they lied to the court about it.
This matters because Ms. Willis appointed Mr. Wade, a relatively inexperienced prosecutor, to handle the high-profile case, likely with the intention of providing a big career boost to her lover.
The prosecuting couple traveled to exotic locales like Belize and Aruba at Mr. Wade’s expense, but to avoid the accusation that she was benefiting from some of the $700,000 in taxpayer cash she sent Mr. Wade’s way, Ms. Willis claimed that she always reimbursed her paramour in cash.
There are no receipts to confirm these alleged repayments. The DA says she used a “best guestimate” to reconcile the amounts. One could imagine what would happen to a criminal defendant offering such a preposterous excuse in any other proceeding.
But this is no ordinary case. Judge McAfee acknowledged the flimsy pretense was “understandably concerning,” but he accepted it anyway. Ms. Willis wasn’t alone in telling whoppers.
“Wade’s patently unpersuasive explanation for the inaccurate interrogatories he submitted in his pending divorce indicates a willingness on his part to wrongly conceal his relationship with the District Attorney,” the judge wrote.
Rather than disqualifying the lot of liars, Judge McAfee decided that either Ms. Willis or Mr. Wade had to go — but not both of them. He deferred to the state Ethics Commission, the state bar or ultimately the voters of Fulton County to sanction Ms. Willis for any misconduct, adding, “This finding is by no means an indication that the Court condones this tremendous lapse in judgment or the unprofessional manner of the District Attorney’s testimony during the evidentiary hearing.”
The survival of Ms. Willis on the case — Mr. Wade resigned — will benefit Mr. Trump. As the judge acknowledged, “an odor of mendacity remains,” and whatever happens going forward will carry the stench of the third-rate, grifting public servants who brought the indictment in the first place.
Mr. Trump’s strategy all along has been to undermine the left’s abuse of the courts to interfere with the upcoming election by pushing the trial date beyond November. That mission appears to have been accomplished.
The Georgia Court of Appeals should do what Judge McAfee should have done and put an end to this clownish prosecution for good.
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