It was a no-brainer that Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis should have been removed from the case against Donald Trump. Legal experts on both sides of the aisle were predicting as much, and things looked bleak for Fani Willis. She not only embarrassed herself on the witness stand, but evidence suggested she lied under oath as well.
Perhaps Judge Scott McAfee thought his ruling was some form of compromise. But it wasn't even a slap on the wrist for Fani Willis. She must recuse herself from the case or fire her lover, Nathan Wade. I bet Wade was packing up his office within seconds because he's already withdrawn from the case. Did you expect anything different to happen? Fani Willis wasn't ever going to recuse herself.
"Judge splits the baby," Megyn Kelly observed on X/Twitter. "Obviously Wade will go and Fani will stay. It’s a cowardly decision by the judge but still a major win for this defense team."
But this ruling by Judge McAfee was more than a gutless "splitting of the baby" as Megyn Kelly put it. This is just more proof of the two-tiered justice system that Donald Trump and many voices on the right have been calling out for years.
McAfee's ruling was so egregiously awful that even CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig admitted that any other prosecutor would have seen his or her career end.
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“If I’m the DA, I’m taking this as a win. It is a win. She has survived,” Honig said Friday. “That is the most important thing here. I‘d be breathing a sigh of relief, but … wow, is there some bruising. Let me just give you the seven, I think, most severe lines and these are really serious findings by the judge about the DA. And these are all verbatim from the opinion.”
“First of all, there’s a ‘significant appearance of impropriety that infects the prosecution team.’ Second, ‘a tremendous lack in judgment.’ Third, ‘the unprofessional manner of the DA’s testimony. Fourth, ‘the odor of mendacity remains.’ I googled mendacity, it means lying,” Honig added. “And finally, I think this is the most damning, 'There are reasonable questions about whether the DA testified untruthfully.'”
He continued, “Any one of these statements by a judge would be a career-ender for a normal prosecutor to have an on the record of finding that there are reasonable questions about whether you lied under oath. That would be devastating, and we’ll see what the political effects will be."
The political effects? Nathan Wade may have been collateral damage in Fani Willis's quest to fulfill her campaign promise of getting Trump, but I'm sure his career won't be negatively impacted in the long run.
The same goes for Fani Willis. Yes, she's been publicly humiliated, and her ethical lapses and corruption have been exposed, but this little bump in the road will be largely forgotten in time. She's a Democrat, and the publicity elevated her profile. That's what Democrats do. They have a knack for surviving scandals and being celebrated by their party.
As for the case, the same corrupt district attorney and the same judge who let her stay on the case will continue in their roles. After all of this, nothing will change.
It's a sad day for America.
