Fani Willis Plays the Race Card

Fani Willis’ decision to play the race card — and from the pulpit of the famed Big Bethel African Methodist Episcopal church at Atlanta — certainly puts the hay down where us mules can get to it.* The district attorney of Fulton County refused to address conflict of interest allegations against her. Instead she quoted a letter she wrote to God in which she complained, “You did not tell me as a woman of color, it would not matter what I did.”She was responding in church to a motion filed last week by Michael Roman, a co-defendant in Ms. Willis’ sprawling racketeering case against President Trump. Mr. Roman’s lawyer, Ashleigh Merchant, is suggesting that there is a romantic relationship between her and the attorney she’d hired as special prosecutor, Nathan Wade. The details could be in a sealed case for divorce between Mr. Wade and his wife.The New York Sun doesn’t have an interest in that fight, per se. Our interest is in due process. It strikes us, though, that it is not unreasonable for defense counsel in any of the cases brought by Ms. Willis to wonder whether the district attorney is or was personally involved with the lawyer she hired, at top dollar, as the special prosecutor. If no one is above the law, why is a special prosecutor being hired in the first place?“I am tired of being treated cruelly,” Ms. Willis told the faithful on Sunday, referring to death threats, bigotry, and other hostility she’s received. She praised Mr. Wade as a person of “impeccable credentials.” Ms. Merchant, though, asserts that Mr. Wade has never tried a felony case and never handled a racketeering one. She adds that her challenge to his appointment as special prosecutor “has nothing to do with the color” of Mr. Wade’s skin.”It was Reverend King who expressed the dream that his children “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” If Mr. Roman can substantiate his allegations, he will have as much, or greater, claim to that legacy as Ms. Willis. She accuses her foes of “playing the race card when they constantly think I need someone from some other jurisdiction in some other state to tell me how to do a job.”That’s rich. Due process is not about someone in another state telling Ms. Willis how to do her job. Due process is about incorporating the Constitution against all the courts in our land — and, like Ms. Willis, their officers. Both leftists and rightists are sworn to it. Mr. Roman’s brief against Ms. Willis includes specific allegations that Mr. Wade’s appointment was defective and conducted crosswise with the ways of Fulton County.This comes on the heels of a grand jury saga that made a mockery of due process with tales told out of the jury room. Where was Ms. Willis then? Ms. Willis herself has taken to the stump to denounce the 45th president who is the political target of her case. Mr. Trump has yet to co-sign Mr. Roman’s allegations or second his motion before Judge McAfee. It seems that he, too, wants to lay eyes on the evidence.As, apparently, does the judge, on whom Ms. Willis was not prepared to wait before she took to the hustings of Big AME Church. It requires no defense of Mr. Trump to ask if justice is being done in Fulton County. As for God, we don’t belittle His correspondence with Ms. Willis. To millions of us mules who pasture in this constitutional republic, though, it matters what the District Attorney did, and when she did it. ________* We were taught this phrasing, which we’ve used often, by Ralph McGill, now gone alas, of the Atlanta Constitution.

Fani Willis Plays the Race Card

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