Whither Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis?

Since May, I’ve been worrying that District Attorney Fani Willis may lose her job. Now that I’ve seen the monumental indictment she’s delivered, I’m also wondering if she does lose her job, what will happen to all that meticulous work.

As I was finishing this piece, here’s what happened: “Georgia Republican Lawmaker Moves to Impeach Trump prosecutor Fani Willis.”

(And I’d been considering whether there was sufficient reason for my concerns to warrant this post!)

As a Georgia State Senator, I am officially calling for an emergency session to review the actions of Fani Willis. 

America is under attack. I’m not going to sit back and watch as radical left prosecutors politically TARGET political opponents. pic.twitter.com/gpzg2l5uIU

— Sen. Colton Moore (@realColtonMoore) August 17, 2023

Fani Willis is the courageous, smart Fulton County District Attorney who just handed Donald Trump his fourth and most sweeping indictment. There are probably tons of Americans like me who think Trump and his cronies comprise a “crime family”—the term he has tried to pin on President Biden in one of his frequent and infamous “I’m not, but he is” projections.

Willis and her colleagues found a way to bring the whole bunch of them out of the shadows.

After a two-and-a-half year investigation, DA Willis and her team wrapped the bucket of crimes to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia together with a RICO (Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act) charge, essentially saying this web of corruption was a “criminal racketeering enterprise.”

Georgia’s RICO law is more flexible than others. It doesn’t require that the conspiracy be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and prosecutors need only prove two of the many crimes named in the indictment. Shouldn’t be hard. The indictment backs up 161 “overt act[s] in furtherance of the conspiracy” with copious evidence. [A clarification: the “overt acts” may or may not be criminal; they help form the pattern to prove a conspiracy. The prosecution must prove a minimum of two “predicate” acts or offenses that are clearly criminal, such as forgery or attempts to influence witnesses.]

As the Georgia governor can’t issue pardons—and the parole board won’t even consider a pardon until a convicted felon has served five years of a term, it’s not surprising that Trump et al are perhaps even more unhinged than ever.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of Willis’s work. This is the indictment’s Introduction:

“Defendant Donald John Trump lost the United States presidential election held on November 3, 2020. One of the states he lost was Georgia. Trump and the other Defendants charged in this Indictment refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump. That conspiracy contained a common plan and purpose to commit two or more acts of racketeering activity in Fulton County, Georgia, elsewhere in the State of Georgia, and in other states.”

Could anything be more succinct? I understand why New York Times editorial board member David Firestone observed that:

“Unlike the other three cases against Mr. Trump, this one is an indictment for history, for the generations to come who will want to know precisely how the men and women in Mr. Trump’s orbit tried to subvert the Constitution and undermine American democracy and why they failed. And it is a statement for the future that this kind of conduct is regarded as intolerable and that the criminal justice system, at least in the year 2023, remained sturdy enough to try to counter it.”

Here’s a copy of the 98-page indictment; and here’s a link to a reading of it. It’s long, but you can learn a lot by skimming through the contents pages.

Back to why I’ve been worrying about Fani Willis.

Of course I’m concerned about her safety—as well as that of all the prosecutors, judges, witnesses, and jurors involved in Trump’s multitudinous, seemingly nonstop criming. She’s been open about the death threats she’s been receiving, and they will only increase now.

But my worrying about her job began on May 5, not long after Willis announced she planned to seek an indictment against Trump. On that day, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed a bill establishing a “Prosecuting Attorneys Statewide Qualifications Commission.” This “commission” is a group of political appointees with the power to oversee and remove local district attorneys—who are elected!

(The Georgia law is part of a frightening pattern by Republicans in a number of states to challenge/remove local district attorneys—many of them Black—who’ve sought reforms and demonstrated independence. It deserves more public scrutiny and outrage.)

Kemp’s no ally of Trump’s; last November, he testified (under subpoena) before the Georgia grand jury. Last week, after the indictment was unsealed, he reiterated that Trump’s claims he’d won the state were false.

Nor are other Georgia Republican officials who have testified against him, including Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and former Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan, whose help Trump had sought in reversing Georgia’s election results.

But Kemp certainly hasn’t expressed appreciation for Willis’s diligent work or praised her in any way. When he received the subpoena, he accused her of “engineering” the timing because it was in the midst of his reelection campaign.

And it’s hard to know how deeply she may have stirred the state Republicans’ hornets nest. Three of the fake electors were indicted, while at least another eight were granted immunity. One of those indicted as a fake elector, David Shafer, is a former state senator and state GOP chair who continues to pose a danger to our democracy, said legal analyst Norman Eisen, an expert on ethics and anti-corruption. “Fani’s putting the spotlight on the danger,” he said.

The current lieutenant governor, Burt Jones, was another one of the sixteen fake electors, and he had also tried to overturn Biden’s win when he was a state senator. The judge prevented Willis from indicting him, stating she had a conflict of interest because she’d hosted a fundraiser for his Democratic opponent in 2022. As a result, the Georgia state Prosecuting Attorneys Council will appoint a special prosecutor to determine if his actions were criminal.

Norman Eisen, who has been involved in a number of conflict resolutions, said emphatically that he believes the judge was wrong: there was no conflict of interest. And it’s clear the judge didn’t think it was significant enough to derail this indictment.

But the pressure is on from Trump’s allies in Georgia and elsewhere to get this case thrown out entirely. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to wonder if that alleged conflict of interest will suddenly mushroom into a reason to question Willis’s impartiality.

When the Republican legislators wrote the legislation that could endanger Willis’s independence, their target was reportedly not Willis, but another strong Democratic woman elected district attorney: Deborah Gonzalez of Atlanta. Her prosecutorial sins include declining to charge people for possession of marijuana and for abortion-related “crimes.”

Despite the charges and threats, Willis has acted with admirable disregard for the enemies she has made or may make in pursuing justice. She had previously used RICO against teachers engaged in a testing fraud, and she’s currently applying it to a rap musician and others accused of a series of street crimes.

News junkie that I am, regrettably, after learning that the indictment had been handed down Monday night, I tuned in to MSNBC. Rachel Maddow, at the helm of its panel, voiced the concern I’ve been harboring since May 5:

“What will happen if they remove Fani Willis?”

Maddow’s colleagues acknowledged that was a legitimate concern. And Annie the optimist who worries a lot began worrying more.

A lengthy article that appeared in Slate in March of this year–“Can Georgia Republicans Really Fire a Prosecutor for Indicting Trump”–stressed that the courts can and should strike down the law.

Co-authors Norman Eisen and Fred Wertheimer wrote:

“Under the Georgia Constitution, district attorneys are elected to four-year terms from the electorate in local judicial circuits, and they have immunity from private suits for actions arising from their performance of their duties.

“Powers of review and oversight of attorneys for allegations of misconduct is, in Georgia, like throughout the country, exclusively reserved for judges. This separation of powers works the same way in many other state constitutional frameworks.”

The Georgia courts should, therefore, strike it down, they stated.

“Because oversight of legal practice (including discipline) is an ‘inherent power’ of the judiciary, the Georgia Legislature cannot encroach on this judicial power by creating specially designated laws to interfere with the actions of disfavored district attorneys.”

Four local district attorneys have recently sued to have the new law invalidated, and they’re not all reformers.

This is such an important case because of the way it knits together the disparate actions of multiple people in multiple places committing varying and often overlapping crimes—all united by a common purpose: to help Donald Trump overthrow our democracy.

One of its most valuable sections shines a light on the egregious harm done to two poll workers, Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss. I think anyone who saw their testimony before the House January 6th committee will appreciate this dramatic and essential focus on the human toll wrought by the Big Lie. It will surely resonate with jurors.

My own sense of justice tells me that the woman who devoted two-and-a-half years of her life, and counting, to this feat should be unencumbered in seeing her ambitious project through to its completion—free of the intervention of smug, lawless politicians.

The optimistic part of me that always struggles to surmount the worried part continues to hope that in the not too distant future, millions of Americans will be watching this televised trial tear apart the Big Lie, methodically and convincingly, and dispatch justice to the Big Liars—at long last.

Annie