Fani Willis has a jury problem in Donald Trump election interference case: legal expert

Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance sounded the alarm Monday over a daunting obstacle that threatens to run Georgia election racketeering case off track: jury selection.

In her substack Civil Discourse, Vance raised concerns about Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' tight schedule for finding a panel of jurors in Georgia ready to hear a historic corruption case against former President Donald Trump.

"If the appellate courts don’t move quickly, the trial delays will begin to mount up," wrote Vance. "Any delays reset the clock with the need for that process to take place before the trial itself can begin."

Complicating the schedule is Special Counsel Jack Smith's parallel case against Trump, which slated to go to trial in March 2024, just five months before Willis hopes hers will begin.

And Judge Scott McAfee indicated jury selection should begin in February, six months before Willis would like the trial to begin.

But that might be an optimistic time frame for such a high-profile defendant in a complicated case, Vance warned — in fact, another racketeering case Willis is prosecuting, against rap star Young Thug, took nearly 10 months.

"Jury selection could eat up a good chunk of time here," Vance wrote. "It took Willis’ office almost ten months to pick a jury in the RICO trial of the rapper Young Thug. That doesn’t bode well for a fast start with the Fulton County case."

The Georgia case takes advantage of that state's unusually broad RICO laws to argue that Trump, along with several attorneys and GOP operatives, essentially ran an organized crime ring to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Trump has pleaded not guilty.

Correction: The original version of this report conflated the court dates of Special Counsel Jack Smith's and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' cases. It was corrected at 5:45 p.m. on Dec. 18.