The White-House inspired prosecution of President-elect Donald Trump for supposed election interference in Georgia took another turn for the worse.
A Fulton County judge has ordered District Attorney Fani Willis to turn over to Judicial Watch all correspondence with the House select committee that probed the mostly peaceful protest at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, and Special Counsel Jack Smith, who accused Trump of illegally taking classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate, and conspiracy to defraud the United States for his actions after the 2020 election.
That means Judicial Watch will find out the extent of the collusion, if any, among Willis, Smith, and congressional Democrats to prosecute Trump.
Court Filing Ignored
The trouble began for Willis — who stands credibly accused of breaching legal ethics by not recusing herself from the Trump case — in August 22, 2023, when Judicial Watch filed an open-records request for “All documents and communication sent to, received from, or relating to Smith and his office and the J6 Committee.”
Willis’ office replied the next day that it received the request. Later that day, it claimed that “[w]e do not have the responsive records.”
Judicial Watch sued, claiming that “plaintiff has since learned that the County’s representation about not having records responsive to the request is likely false.”
The lawsuit cited a letter to Willis from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) that cited and included a letter Willis wrote to the J6 Committee chief and former insurrectionist Bennie Thompson of Mississippi.
Willis’ missive, she wrote, was “an official request from me for access to records that may be relevant to our criminal investigation. Those record[s] include but are not limited to recordings and transcripts of witness interviews and depositions, electronic and print records of communications, and records of travel.”
The letter also requested a meeting with committee investigators “in person.”
Filed March 11, the lawsuit required Willis to answer within 30 days, which she never did.
In May, Judicial Watch asked the judge, Robert C.I. McBurney, to find Willis in default and order the release of the records.
The judge did so Monday: “The Court finds Defendant is in default and has been since 11 April 2024,” McBurney ruled.
The ruling means that Willis violated the state’s open-records law. She must now provide all documents requested within five days unless she withholds records in accordance with state law.
As well, the judge set a hearing for December 20 to determine Judicial Watch’s legal fees.
Those, of course, wouldn’t be an issue if Willis hadn’t violated the state’s open-records law and refused to provide the material Judicial Watch requested.
Ethical Concerns
The letter from Willis to Thompson clearly shows that her office’s claim to have no records responsive to Judicial Watch’s request is almost certainly false. But that falsehood is only the latest of Willis’ actions that raise concerns about her ethics.
In March, liberal legal commentator Jonathan Turley said Willis must recuse herself from the case against Trump because she hired her boyfriend, Nathan Wade, as a special prosecutor, and paid him ridiculous legal fees. The lovebirds then went for expensive cruises and vacations.
When attorneys for a defendant in the case moved to get Willis removed because of the affair, Judge Scott McAfee did not do so. But he did say that the Willis-Wade affair was inappropriate. As well, he ruled that Willis’ public claims about the defendants — that their motion was racially motivated — was “legally improper.” McAfee said either Wade or Willis had to resign from the case. Wade did so immediately, but Willis mulishly stayed on.
Despite McAfee’s ruling, Turley said the lawyers’ code of ethics required her to step down.
The “personal controversies” of Willis and Wade “have derailed the case and mired the prosecution in scandal,” Turley wrote:
Ethically, this should not have been a difficult question. They should have stepped aside.
That conclusion is more than evident in Judge McAfee’s decision, which shreds their claims on the stand and outside of the courthouse.
The court describes Willis’s controversial speech at a church as “playing the race card … to cast racial aspersions at an indicted Defendant’s decision to file this pretrial motion.”
“It is unimaginable how any prosecutor with a modicum of ethical awareness could remain in the case after [McAfee’s] damning opinion,” Turley wrote on X. “Willis has consistently put her personal interests before those of her office.”
Other Critics
Another critic was a former U.S. attorney appointed by President Barack Obama.
“I’d tell her to get out of the case” because of the scandal, Michael Moore told CNN:
I really think that this type of case, with these allegations, this case is bigger than any one prosecutor. And I think probably to preserve the case and to show that what’s of most importance to her is the facts of the Trump case, as opposed to her political career, if you will, at this moment.
Willis filed more than three dozen charges against Trump and other defendants, six of which the judge dismissed.
She accuses Trump of violating the states’ RICO law because he asked a state official to “find” the votes he needed to defeat Biden in the 2020 election.
In February, Breitbart disclosed that the prosecution is another Biden Mafia conspiracy. Sources told the website they are “100 percent certain” that the White House planted Deputy District Attorney Jeff DiSantis in Willis’ office to get Trump.
“He’s the one,” a source told the website. “He is the one pulling all the strings.”
In March, Breitbart revealed that DiSantis’ business partner was a Biden campaign legman through his company, a top vendor that pulled in almost $9 million from Biden’s failed presidential effort.
Smith ended his prosecution against Trump after Trump crushed Vice President Harris on November 5.
