Fani Willis Refuses To Pay Trump Millions in Legal Fees as She Clings to Case From Which She Was Disqualified

The decision by an Atlanta judge to allow Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to access immediate appellate review in a clash over millions of dollars in legal fees means that the tortured tale of her prosecution of President Trump is far from finished.The granting of a Certificate of Immediate Review by Judge Scott McAfee allows Ms. Willis to challenge his earlier ruling that barred her office from intervening in the dispute over some $17 million in legal fees sought by Trump and several co-defendants. Those bills stem from a recent Georgia law that allows the recovery of costs if a prosecutor is disqualified and charges are dismissed.That law would appear to apply to Ms. Willis, who was disqualified from the criminal racketeering case she brought against Mr. Trump and 18 others for alleged interference in the 2020 presidential election in the Peach State. The Georgia Court of Appeals found that her secret romance with her handpicked special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, made this the “rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice.”Ms. Willis, though, claims that the law that appears to mandate that she — meaning Fulton County taxpayers — cover her erstwhile defendants’ bills is unconstitutional. She also contends that the statute as written does not apply to her circumstances because she was disqualified for a “significant appearance of impropriety,” rather than impropriety itself.The prosecutor intends to argue to the appellate tribunal that she “has no intention of allowing Fulton County taxpayers to pay such an absurd amount for such an absurd reason.” To do that, though, she first needs to regain standing after Judge McAfee found that her earlier disqualification also pertains to this post-dismissal dispute over costs. Six million dollars of the total $17 million were fees accumulated by Mr. Trump’s legal team.Judge McAfee’s order would allow Fulton County itself to challenge the award, but not Ms. Willis’s office. That decision comes nearly a year to the day after he ruled that Ms. Willis could stay on her case, though he required Mr. Wade to depart. Judge McAfee, a Republican, found that the behavior of Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade was “legally improper” and emitted an “odor of mendacity.” He stopped short, though, of disqualifying her — a step that the appellate court decided was warranted. Ms. Willis argues that “without intervention by the District Attorney, any award would violate basic fundamental notions of due process by denying her an opportunity to be heard or even challenge the reasonableness of the claimed attorney fees before it is taken from her budget.” Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Steven Sadow, contends that Ms. Willis’s “disqualification for improper conduct bars Willis and her office from any further participation in this dismissed, lawfare case.”The district attorney, who was reelected in a rout in November, told Georgia lawmakers in December that Mr. Trump and his camarilla amounted to “criminals” and “crooks.” She also said that “I know you want to take me back to 1948, where an African American prosecutor can only prosecute certain types of people, but I prosecute and stand up for all victims that come into my circuit.” That dismissal of the case — “in its entirety” — was ordered by Judge McAfee after the Georgia Supreme Court declined to disturb Ms. Willis’s disqualification. An independent prosecutor, Peter Skandalakis, wrote that the acts at the base of her indictment were “not acts I would consider sufficient” to sustain a criminal case through conviction. Mr. Skandalakis reckoned that the “strongest and most prosecutable case” against Mr. Trump was not Ms. Willis’s but the one brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith.Mr. Skandalakis also reported that he had difficulty finding another prosecutor to take on the case after Ms. Willis’s dismissal. In the end, he made the recommendation for dismissal himself. Mr. Sadow declared that “The political persecution of President Trump by disqualified DA Fani Willis is finally over. This case should never have been brought. A fair and impartial prosecutor has put an end to this lawfare.”

Fani Willis Refuses To Pay Trump Millions in Legal Fees as She Clings to Case From Which She Was Disqualified

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