Tag: fani willis
Judge In Trump Georgia Case Says Willis Can Continue Prosecution

Judge In Trump Georgia Case Says Willis Can Continue Prosecution

March 15 (Reuters) - The Georgia judge overseeing Donald Trump's trial on charges of trying to overturn his election defeat in the U.S. state said that lead prosecutor Fani Willis can remain on the case, so long as she removes a deputy she had a personal relationship with.

Judge Scott McAfee's ruling was a blow to the Republican former U.S. president, who seeks to unseat Democratic President Joe Biden in a Nov. 5 election. Trump has sought to delay trials in the four criminal cases he faces until after the election.

McAfee's decision caps a tumultuous two months for Fulton County District Attorney Willis, whose romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she appointed to lead the case, was disclosed in a January court filing by a Trump co-defendant.

It also ends three months of contentious litigation and evidentiary hearings over the relationship that effectively paused the rest of the case, though McAfee has yet to set a trial date.

Defense lawyers said the relationship posed a conflict of interest and improperly enriched Willis and Wade, who vacationed together while Wade was drawing a government salary.

McAfee found the relationship did not pose a conflict of interest but said it created "a significant appearance of impropriety" that required either Willis or Wade to step aside.

Trump's lawyer Steve Sadow said in a statement that he respected the judge's ruling but believed it did "not afford appropriate significance to the prosecutorial misconduct of Willis and Wade."

Willis' office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump has pleaded not guilty in all the cases against him. He is accused in the Georgia case of illegally pressuring state officials to overturn his loss to Biden there in the 2020 presidential election.

He has so far been successful in delaying the start of any trial as he seeks to return to the White House.

One in four self-identified Republicans and about half of independents said they would not vote for Trump if he was convicted of a felony crime by a jury, according to a February Reuters/Ipsos poll. That would be a significant liability in a race where opinion polls show Trump and Biden essentially tied.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review Trump's bid for presidential immunity in a federal election interference case in Washington, which could delay that trial until after the election.

The judge in Trump's upcoming trial in New York on charges related to hush-money payments to a porn star during his 2016 campaign is weighing postponing the March 25 scheduled trial start after federal prosecutors turned over a mountain of new evidence.

Willis and Wade testified that their relationship did not begin until after Wade was hired. Prosecutors argued the affair was irrelevant because it did not harm the defendants.

Defense lawyers accused the prosecutors of lying to the court, saying the relationship began before Wade was hired. In court papers filed on Feb. 23, Trump's attorney cited location data from Wade’s cellphone suggesting he made numerous late-night visits to Willis’ home before she appointed him.

Trump is also under indictment in Florida over his handling of classified documents upon leaving office. The judge overseeing that case is weighing Trump's bid to move his May 20 trial date.

Reporting by Jack Queen in New York and Andrew Goudsward in Fort Pierce, Florida; editing by Scott Malone, Jonathan Oatis and Howard Goller

A Black Thing: What We Learned From The Father Of Fani Willis

A Black Thing: What We Learned From The Father Of Fani Willis

What did we learn from the testimony of John C. Floyd III at last Friday's hearing in Georgia? Floyd, the father of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, was called by prosecutors defending Willis from charges that she has a conflict of interest in her prosecution of 19 defendants, including Donald Trump, that he led a “criminal racketeering enterprise” to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.

One of Trump’s co-defendants, Michael Roman, a campaign aide to Trump, alleged that Willis had a personal relationship with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor Willis had hired to help in the prosecution of Trump and his co-defendants. Roman charged that Willis benefitted financially from the personal relationship with Wade and should be disqualified from prosecuting the case against them.

Floyd was called to testify about what he knew of his daughter’s relationship with Wade, which wasn’t much, and to knock down insinuations by Roman and others that the fact Willis repaid her paramour Wade in cash for her part of several trips they shared, including travel to Belize and the Caribbean island of Aruba, was suspect. Willis and Wade were questioned skeptically about the arrangement yesterday by lawyers for defendants who seemed to be implying that their use of cash, rather than checks, implied a coverup of an illicit arrangement that benefitted Willis.

Floyd finally put an end to the insinuations that Willis could not possibly have had enough cash to repay Wade for luxury travel. He explained that he had counseled his daughter to always keep a good deal of cash on hand and turned to address the judge and said, “I’m not trying to be racist, your honor, but it’s a Black thing. I was trained, and most Black folks, they hide cash or they keep cash, and I was trained you always keep some cash. I gave my daughter her first cash box and told her, ‘Always keep some cash.’”

Floyd went on to tell a story about being out to lunch with his wife and young daughter in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while he was taking a course at Harvard, and having a restaurant refuse to accept his American Express card, another credit card, or the American Express Travelers Checks he offered to pay with. He said he had to pay the $9.51 check with a ten dollar bill from his wallet. He explained that he told his daughter to always take cash with her when she went out on a date with a man in case something happened and she wanted to leave.

Lawyers for Roman and other defendants pressed Floyd on the time he spent living in his daughter’s new house in the Atlanta area. They seemed to be implying that because he lived alone in the house, Willis’ absence was evidence that she was “co-habiting” with Wade, an allegation that defendant Roman has made publicly.

Floyd told the lawyers that his daughter moved out of the house because of protests against her at the home that began shortly after she was sworn in as district attorney in 2021. He said he had called police to Willis’ house in February of 2021 because protesters were standing outside shouting “the B-word and the N-word.” He said racist graffiti had been sprayed on the house, which he cleaned off before Willis could see it. He said Willis had had to move at least four times because of death threats. He was asked if he knew where she was living each time she moved, and he said no, that he didn’t want to know “in case somebody held a gun to my head and asked me.”

It bears noting that the questioning of Willis and Wade yesterday about what in any other circumstance would be considered an office romance, and the questioning of Floyd today about the relationship between a Black father and a Black daughter who followed him into the practice of law, racism wasn’t the subtext, it was the text. At one point, when Floyd was asked why he had moved out of a house he owned, the lawyer questioning him pursued the line of inquiry until Floyd was forced to explain that he had “lost” his house in a dispute with a reverse mortgage company.

The questions were clearly an attempt to humiliate Floyd, as were other questions about why he had lived in his daughter’s house while not owning a home of his own. At one point, Roman’s lawyer, Ashleigh Merchant, asked if he was in Georgia “every day” of the years 2019 and 2020. That question, and many others she asked, had no bearing on the allegations that gave rise to the hearing.

The allegation that Willis had somehow benefitted financially from her private relationship with a lawyer she had hired to work in her office was a page right out of the Donald Trump playbook, that everything in life is transactional and performative, because there is no such thing as acting on real feelings.

It is a measure of how pathetic and meanspirited and racist our politics has become that the hearing in Georgia even took place.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter, from which this is reprinted with permission.

With Chesebro Plea After Powell, Fani Willis Is On A Roll

With Chesebro Plea After Powell, Fani Willis Is On A Roll

Now we know what Fani Willis and her team of prosecutors were doing while newspapers and cable TV chryons were headlining that Sidney Powell’s co-defendant, Kenneth Chesebro, had not copped a plea deal with prosecutors. Willis and her team were videotaping Chesebro’s proffer of written, electronic, and oral information he could provide to prosecutors in return for a sentence of three to six years of probation, community service, and a fine for pleading guilty to a single felony charge in Georgia. Chesebro had faced seven counts involving his participation in a scheme to organize fake electors to file falsified electoral ballots for Donald Trump with the National Archives and the President of the Senate in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election on January 6, when the Congress met to certify electoral ballots and declare Joe Biden winner of the 2020 election.

Willis has faced criticism ever since she empaneled an investigatory grand jury to look into what laws were broken by Trump and his compatriots in Georgia as they attempted to overturn the results of the state’s presidential election, won by Joe Biden. Willis was foundering, critics said, taking too much time on witnesses who refused subpoenas and had to be sued to get their testimony.

Then in August, when Willis finally brought her indictment against Trump and 18 co-defendants, critics said it was all just too much. How does she expect to get 19 defendants into one courtroom and run a prosecution against them? It was too unwieldly, many said, an overreach by a publicity-hungry local prosecutor trying to burnish her reputation by going after the former president, who was already facing indictment by the Special Counsel for committing many of the same crimes.

Then the Kraken cracked, and 24 hours later, so did the heretofore loyal Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro.

Reading the 98 pages of the indictment of Trump and his 18 co-defendants, it’s hard to keep up with Chesebro, he was so busy sending emails, calling co-conspirators, and meeting with John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani and members of the Trump reelection team. After Trump lost more than 60 of his legal challenges to results of the election in battleground states, something had to be done.

And then came John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro to the rescue with their Hail Mary scheme to put together slates of fake presidential electors for Trump in Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia and use them to disrupt the certification of the Electoral College ballots in Congress on January 6, 2021. The fake electoral ballots had to be signed in the states by December 14, when the real electors met and cast their ballots for Biden. Then the fake electoral ballots had to be filed with the National Archives, and transmitted to the President of the Senate -- Vice President Mike Pence -- in time for the meeting of the Congress.

Busy, busy, busy were Ken and Rudy and John and Donald. From the Fulton County indictment:

Act 39: “A memorandum was written by KENNETH JOHN CHESEBRO to James R. Troupis, an attorney associated with the Trump Campaign, and advocates for the position that Trump presidential elector nominees in Wisconsin should meet and cast electoral votes for DONALD JOHN TRUMP on December 14, 2020, despite the fact that DONALD JOHN TRUMP lost the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Wisconsin.”

Act 47: “KENNETH JOHN CHESEBRO stated in the e-mail that certain individuals associated with the Trump Campaign asked him ‘to help coordinate with the other contested States, to help with logistics of the electors in other States hopefully joining in casting their votes on Monday.’”

Act 49: “On or about the 10th day of December 2020, KENNETH JOHN CHESEBRO sent an email with attached documents to Arizona Republican Party Executive Director Greg Safsten and others. The documents were 'to be used by Trump presidential elector nominees in Arizona for the purpose of casting electoral votes for DONALD JOHN TRUMP on December 14, 2020, despite the fact that DONALD JOHN TRUMP lost the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Arizona. This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.”

Act 50: “KENNETH JOHN CHESEBRO sent an e-mail to Republican Party of Wisconsin Chairman Brian Schimming with proposed language for documents to be used by Trump presidential elector nominees in Wisconsin for the purpose of casting electoral votes for DONALD JOHN TRUMP on December 14, 2020, despite the fact that DONALD JOHN TRUMP lost the November 3, 2020, presidential election in Wisconsin.”

In Acts 51 through 53, Chesebro sent emails with proposed fake elector documents to officials in Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Georgia furthering the fake elector scheme.

Act 58: “KENNETH JOHN CHESEBRO sent an e-mail to Jim DeGraffenreid and stated that ‘the purpose of having the electoral votes sent in to Congress is to provide the opportunity to debate the election irregularities in Congress, and to keep alive the possibility that the votes could be flipped to Trump.’”

In Acts 59, 60, and 61, Chesebro sent more fake elector documents to members of the Trump campaign to be used by fake electors in Georgia and other states.

In Act 64, Chesebro conspired with Giuliani and a member of the Trump campaign to ensure that the media was not notified of a meeting of Trump fake electors in Wisconsin.

In Act 69, Chesebro sent the same package of suggested electoral ballot documents to co-defendant Michael Roman with the proviso that the documents were to be used in the Nevada fake elector scheme.

Act 70: “KENNETH JOHN CHESEBRO sent an e-mail to RUDOLPH WILLIAM LOUIS GIULIANI with the subject ‘PRIVILEGED AND CONFIDENTIAL Brief notes on President of the Senate strategy.’ In the email, KENNETH JOHN CHESEBRO outlined multiple strategies for disrupting and delaying the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021, the day prescribed by law for counting votes cast by the duly elected and qualified presidential electors from Georgia and the other states. In the email, KENNETH JOHN CHESEBRO stated that the strategies outlined by him were ‘preferable to allowing the Electoral Count Act to operate by its own terms.’” (Its “own terms” being following the law and living up to the full meaning of how elections are certified in the Constitution.)

In Acts 71 and 72, Chesebro conspired with Giuliani and Roman to further the fake elector scheme in Georgia.

In Act 94, Chesebro was the recipient of an email from John Eastman laying out a strategy to avoid having the fake elector scheme considered in a hearing by the judiciary committee on the constitutionality of the Electoral Count Act. They were afraid a hearing might raise issues the Trump campaign did not want to bring up about their scheme to interfere with the Electoral College, especially if their scheme ended up before the Supreme Court.

Act 109: “On or about the lst day of January 2021, KENNETH JOHN CHESEBRO sent an email to JOHN CHARLES EASTMAN and unindicted co-conspirator Individual 3, whose identity is known to the Grand Jury. In the e-mail, KENNETH JOHN CHESEBRO outlined strategy for disrupting and delaying the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021, the day prescribed by law for counting votes cast by the duly elected and qualified presidential electors from Georgia and the other states.”

Act 124: Another memo from Chesebro to Giuliani and Eastman on Jan. 4, 2021, outlining “multiple strategies for disrupting and delaying the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021.”

Listening as Chesebro’s plea deal was read aloud in Fulton County court on Friday morning, all the names outlined above in the indictment rang out loudly: TRUMP, GIULIANI, EASTMAN, ROMAN. The criminality of the fake elector scheme was mentioned multiple times. Chesebro was asked again and again if he understood the charges against him and the criminal count to which he was pleading guilty. Of course he did. Chesebro, bless his black little conspiratorial Republican heart, is a graduate of Harvard Law School.

After prosecutors outlined the plea deal and Chesebro pled guilty, his lawyer, Scott Grubman, tried to suggest that because his client had pleaded guilty to only one count, somehow that proved he wasn’t a key player in the fake elector scheme. The plea deal “proves that he was not and never was the architect of any sort of fake elector plan or anything like that,” Grubman told reporters. This was after Grubman and his client had spent the last two months trying to come up with a strategy to defend against the “Acts” in the indictment I’ve outlined above. The strategy they ended up with was pleading guilty and agreeing to testify against any and all co-defendants, up to and including Donald John Trump.

The Washington Post reported today that Grubman said he would be surprised if Chesebro were to be called as a witness in cases against his co-defendants because, “He [Chesebro] didn’t snitch on anyone. He simply decided it was time for him to put this behind him and go on with his life.” And maybe, just maybe, Chesebro knew he did the crime and didn’t want to do the time.

With prosecutors and judges in other cases against Trump facing doxing, harassment of their spouses and families by Trump himself, and death threats from Trump followers, you have to wonder how Chesebro thought that pleading guilty to crimes he committed on behalf of Trump and offering to testify against the former president and others is going to allow him to “go on with his life” as if nothing happened.

Chesebro is applying to the court to allow him to serve out the time of his probation in Puerto Rico, where he has taken up residence. I guess he thinks that putting 1,038 miles of ocean between himself and Mar a Lago will keep the boogeyman and his minions away.

Ha!

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. You can subscribe to his daily columns at luciantruscott.substack.com and follow him on Twitter @LucianKTruscott and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV.

Please consider subscribing to Lucian Truscott Newsletter, from which this is reprinted with permission.

Fani Willis

Seeking October Trial, Fani Willis Calls Trump Co-Defendant's Bluff

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Thursday "effectively call[ed]" former Donald Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro’s bluff, according to Atlantic Journal-Constitution reporter Tamar Hallerman.

Chesebro is one of 19 people charged earlier this month in a sprawling 41-count indictment accusing Trump and his associates of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

Prosecutors say Chesebro wrote internal campaign memorandums that purported to offer a legal framework for appointing fraudulent electors to overturn the will of Georgia voters and give Trump the state’s 16 Electoral college votes. Chesebro “is charged with racketeering and other offenses, such as conspiring to commit impersonating a public officer, conspiring to commit forgery in the first degree and conspiring to commit false statements and writings,” the Atlantic Journal-Constitution reports.

Chesebro on Wednesday filed an “aggressive” motion demanding a speedy trial in the case. Reporters Hallerman and Bill Rankin described the motion as “the legal equivalent of throwing a bomb into the case,” adding the move “could force Willis to try Chesebro by the end of December and scuttle her plans to prosecute all 19 defendants together.”

But, as Hailerman and Rankin report, Willis on Thursday called for the trial “to commence for all 19 defendants on Oct. 23.

“Willis is effectively calling Chesebro's bluff with this new filing — telegraphing to him and the 18th others that the state is indeed ready,” Hallerman wrote in a tweet. “Will be up to Judge McAfee to weigh in now. There's also the question of what happens to the pending fed removal motions….”

McAfee indeed weighed in “a few hours later setting the trial date Willis wanted but ruling it would apply only to Chesebro,” the reporters note.

“Due to the defendant’s timely demand for speedy trial ... scheduling will occur on an expedited timeline,” McAfee wrote in his decision. “At this time, these deadlines do not apply to any co-defendant.”

As the reporters note, multiple legal issues interact Chesebro’s with speedy trial request. For one, three defendants, including former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, have asked to transfer their cases out of Fulton County Superior Court to U.S. District Court in Atlanta, and a number of legal experts say if one defendant is removed the other 18 would follow.”

According to the reporters, there’s no precedent for “how Georgia’s speedy trial rule and the federal removal statute interact.”
“There’s no case law,” Atlanta attorney Andrew Fleischman told Hailerman and Rankin.

The reporters add: “Under Georgia law, the speedy trial demand filed by Chesebro applies to all 19 defendants."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.