‘Most unusual’: Legal expert confounded by Fulton County DA's suggestion she isn’t coordinating with Jack Smith
July 31, 2023
A legal expert on Monday called Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis’ recent statement indicating she isn’t coordinating with special counsel Jack Smith “most unusual.”
Ryan Goodman, an NYU law school professor and former special counsel at the Department of Defense, during an appearance on CNN”s “Erin Burnett OutFront” called the lack of coordination a head scratcher, suggesting it would serve the interests of both prosecutors to collaborate and share evidence.
Willis told WABC in an interview on Saturday that “I don’t know what Jack Smith is doing, Jack Smith doesn’t know what I'm doing. In all honesty, if Jack Smith was standing next to me, I'm not sure I would know who he was. My guess is he probably can't pronounce my name correctly.”
Smith has already indicted Trump over allegations he mishandled classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and is investigating the former president for his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Willis is investigating allegations Trump tried to overturn Georgia's 2020 presidential election.
Burnett noted that Goodman in previous interviews suggested he believed the prosecutors were likely coordinating “both from a legal perspective and also from a logistical perspective.”
“What do you hear when you hear her say, ‘I wouldn't even know we was?’” Burnett asked.
“It's most unusual in the sense that the norm would be for the federal prosecutor and the state prosecutor to coordinate, compare notes, maybe even share information about what witnesses have said, because otherwise they'd be at a disadvantage vis-à-vis a potential defendant. The defendant would have more information through discovery in both cases than each individual prosecutor would have on their own,” Goodman said.
“That's why they would want to share that kind of information and the like,” which he said is “aboveboard” and “normal.”
“It's bizarre, in a certain sense, because they're not serving their own interests,” Goodman said.
“Each one of them, their best interests should probably be in some level of communication. So one wonders is ego what's going on here? Why is one keeping a distance from the other? That doesn't quite make sense for what their true self-interests should be for pursuing justice.”
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