CNN legal analyst takes down Fani Willis in scathing op-ed: 'She's no victim here'

In a new op-ed for New York Magazine published this Friday, CNN legal analyst Elie Honig issued a scathing critique of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, saying that her entire election interference criminal case against Donald Trump could "run aground" due to her alleged inappropriate conduct.

Honig started out by slamming Willis' case itself on its merits, saying that to date she has "handed out four embarrassingly cheap, no-prison plea deals," which undermine "those grand-slam RICO charges." Honig adds that "while Willis was the first among the Trump-pursuing prosecutors to launch her investigation, she charged last and is the only one with no trial date."

He then points to the recent defense allegations about Willis’s personal relationship with lead prosecutors Nathan Wade (which she admitted to today). "The DA’s office paid Wade exorbitantly, then he paid for lavish personal recreation for himself and Willis," Honig writes.

Honig says before he was hired by Willis to the case, Wade was “conspicuously underqualified” for the job.

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“According to [Wade’s] own website, he has primarily practiced personal-injury and family law. Well, his defenders note, the man was a judge and a prosecutor. With all due respect: not really, or not in any way that would prepare him for the task at hand. Wade held those titles only at the municipal level, handling petty misdemeanors or less. He has never — repeat, never — tried a single felony criminal case. Yet Willis selected him to lead the most complex and important racketeering case in Georgia history? Something’s up,” Honig writes, adding that Wade was paid over $650,000 to date for his work, which is exponentially higher than the "$73,000 and $90,000" figures other contract lawyers have billed the DA over the past two years.

“How much of Wade’s income has been spent on Willis?” Honig asked, pointing to reports that the pair "allegedly traveled together, on Wade’s dime, to Napa Valley, Florida, and the Caribbean, and on both Norwegian and Royal cruise lines. Whatever the specifics of the relationship, the problem here is that Wade has used public funds paid to him by the DA’s office to pick up the tab for personal expenses for himself and Willis.”

Honig then slammed Willis for her public statements about the case, where she accused the defense of racism for bringing up the allegations.

“Despite her claim that she’s ‘being treated cruelly,’ the district attorney is no victim here,” writes Honig. “Willis is not some civilian plucked out of obscurity and targeted for sport. She chose to run for office as Fulton County DA, and now she holds almost unimaginable clout; she controls tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and holds the awesome power to strip individuals of their personal liberty. If the district attorney wields the power of her office to do favors for her friends, to enrich herself, and to undermine the constitutional rights of her charged defendants, then she has earned the consequences.”

Read the full op-ed over at New York Magazine.