Legal Matters

JUST IN: In a new filing, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis argues that Trump and his co-defendants have not met their burden of showing a disqualifying conflict of interest.

Read the filing: https://t.co/sJuyaQkxa0

— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) March 5, 2024

This pleading lays out the five categories of applicable conflict of interest identified in Georgia case law, based in cases cited by the defendants.

5 standard for the disqualification of an elected constitutional officer that has never before been recognized in Georgia and that is contrary to decades of case law. The cases relied on by the Defendants can be divided into five categories (1) cases that do not concern disqualification at all but that the Defendants use as a source of flowery and righteous—though inapplicable—language; (2) cases where criminal defense attorneys were disqualified on the basis of divided loyalty, in violation of the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct; (3) cases where a prosecutor had an actual personal interest or stake in the outcome of a prosecution; (4) a single case where a defendant was denied a fundamentally fair trial where the district attorney had previously represented the victim in the case; and (5) cases where no actual conflict of interest was shown and disqualification was not proper. The first category of cases is the largest.

In a new filing, Jeffrey Clark says that Fani Willis has a "half-dozen" conflicts of interest warranting her disqualification.

Clark also alleges that Nathan Wade "obviously lied" under oath—and that Willis "ratified" his perjury by not correcting it.https://t.co/9xUYxhXVSg https://t.co/NLYbKMYz1H pic.twitter.com/MlJyu91YNe

— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) March 6, 2024

This pleading has a lot of hand-waving about “enrichment” because Wade spent money (allegedly) in Willis. There is some attempt to imply this creates a “personal interest” in the prosecution, but it’s hard to see why. One case cited involved a DA whose daughter had a close relationship with the victim. Hardly the case here.

It doesn’t otherwise mention any of the categories in the other pleading, but tries to imagine a conflict based on this kind of hand-waving (or hand-wringing). I.e., citations to cases with facts that could be similar, maybe, somehow, to facts they can’t seem to establish in this case.

The main claim is illustrative. The brief alleges that Wade committed perjury in his divorce case, though precisely how he perjured himself, and in what facts material to the divorce (perjury is not misrepresentation, or a difference of opinion about minor facts), is never established. Alleging perjury needs a bit more than that, to say the least. 

There are several silly points, none really worth the court’s time. My favorite is that Willis’s statement there is no evidence she didn’t pay her way on the trips in question is a lie. But that claim (that she lied) depends on evidence no defendant has been able to present in court. The burden of proof here is not on Willis or the state of Georgia.

Pathetic.

I agree with the angrier critics now: time to toss this steaming pile and shut down this cottage industry.