Fani Willis, Doubling Down on Trump Prosecution Amid Personal Woes, Appeals Ruling That Her Case Has a ‘Fatal’ Flaw

District Attorney Fani Willis’s request that six previously dismissed charges be returned to President Trump’s charge sheet underscores how the beleaguered prosecutor is doubling down on her case against the 45th president and his co-defendants.The filing comes as her former boyfriend and special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, was summoned to Washington to answer questions from the House Judiciary Committee. Before he testified in a closed-door session, Ms. Willis wrote the chairman, Representative Jim Jordan, a letter warning that Mr. Wade would not answer any questions that touched on “highly sensitive and confidential information.” Ms. Willis submitted her request with respect to the charges to the Georgia court of appeals, the same appellate court that in December will hear oral arguments on whether Fulton County’s chief prosecutor ought to be disqualified from the sprawling racketeering case she brought against Trump and 18 others. The case was upended by the disclosure that she conducted a secret romance with Mr. Wade. He was paid more than $650,000 as special prosecutor.Trump and his co-defendants adduced evidence that Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis took trips together, during his employment, to Napa Valley, Belize, and Aruba. The district attorney contends that she paid Mr. Wade back — in cash — for those trips. The defendants also argue that the two began their affair before Mr. Wade was hired. The former lovers deny that, and insist that their romance blossomed only once they began working together. Mr. Wade subsequently opined that workplace affairs are “as American as apple pie.” Judge Scott McAfee ruled that though the relationship between the two amounted to a “significant appearance of impropriety” and was characterized by an “odor of mendacity,” the damage done could be remedied by Mr. Wade’s resignation. Ms. Willis is also facing scrutiny for accusations, which she made in a church on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, that her opponents were “playing the race card.” Judge McAfee found those “legally improper” but not worthy of disqualification. Trump has asked the court of appeals to reverse.Now, though, it is Ms. Willis who seeks intervention. Judge McAfee in March ordered those charges dismissed because they were not wrought with sufficient specificity. When it comes to an indictment, vagueness is not only a stylistic defect; courts have held that it also wounds a defendant’s due process rights because it fails to provide crystalline notice of the accusations. That makes mounting a defense challenging.A Fulton County special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, during a hearing at the Fulton County Courthouse October 20, 2023, at Atlanta. Alyssa Pointer/Getty ImagesThe six counts in question all involve allegations that Trump and his camarilla solicited officials in Georgia to violate their oaths of office in the service of overturning the 2020 election results in the Peach State. Of the 41 charges initially handed up by a Fulton County grand jury, 32 are still in place. Trump was charged with 13 crimes — eight are still on his ledger. Ms. Willis maintains that her indictment “more than sufficiently placed [Trump and his five co-defendants] on notice of the conduct at issue and allowed them to prepare an intelligent defense to the charges.” Judge McAfee did not agree, ruling that the “lack of detail concerning an essential legal element is … fatal.” He explains that the indictment contains “all the essential elements of the crimes” but fails to allege them in requisite detail. The Sixth Amendment ordains that “the accused shall enjoy the right to … be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation.” Judge McAfee found that Trump’s phone call to Georgia’s secretary of state, Bradley Raffensperger, was crosswise with that command. That was the colloquy where the 45th president told the official: “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.” The judge determined that Ms. Willis failed to identify the “underlying felony solicited.”Now comes Ms. Willis to argue that the “indictment included an abundance of context and factual allegations about the solicitations at issue, including when the requests were made, to whom the requests were made and the manner in which the requests were made.” That appears to be a response to Judge McAfee’s determination that the “lack of detail concerning an essential legal element is, in the undersigned’s opinion, fatal.”

Fani Willis, Doubling Down on Trump Prosecution Amid Personal Woes, Appeals Ruling That Her Case Has a ‘Fatal’ Flaw

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