'Frightening': 'Lawless' Republicans afraid of indictment are targeting prosecutors who could put them away
Republicans in Georgia have introduced legislation that would give lawmakers closer oversight of elected prosecutors — a move which comes just as one elected prosecutor, Fani Willis of Fulton County, is pursuing an investigation into 2020 election interference that could lead to criminal charges against not just former President Donald Trump, but also of GOP Georgia officials like party chair David Shafer.
This timing was not lost on MSNBC anchor Joy Reid, who speculated with former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance that this could be a ploy by Republicans to quash prosecutions against themselves.
"We're already seeing this Trump-style filter down into officials in the states," said Reid. "You have, in Georgia, these attempts to change the rules to make it so that you can get rid of a prosecutor who's doing something that you politically don't like. Thinking Fani Willis here, to make it easier to cashier someone like her. Two of the matters under consideration, per The New York Times, would allow lawmakers to punish or remove prosecutors for loosely defined reasons including 'willful misconduct,' and reduce the number of signatures to do a recall. You see similar things going on in Pennsylvania, similar things in other states. Going after quote-unquote 'liberal' prosecutors."
"It's frightening to me that the way Republicans are responding to sort of lawlessness among their ranks is by saying, we'll just get rid of the prosecutors so they can't touch us," Reid added.
"What's going on in Georgia is particularly troubling," agreed Vance. "You know, this has been attempted before. After Ahmaud Arbery was killed in South Georgia, and was murdered by three white men and prosecutors tried to keep that investigation from coming to pass, Georgia legislators proposed a measure that would involve oversight over prosecutors, and it went nowhere. Republicans refused to support it. So now we get to this bill, which looks like a thinly disguised effort to give the legislature some way to appoint a board — of course, the folks doing the appointing would all be Republicans — as a way to rein in Fani Willis."
"The example they have come up to justify with it, they're saying it's not about Willis, it's actually about another prosecutor from 2021 who went to prison for corruption," Vance continued. "And the response to that is pretty obvious, right? That was 2021. And you're now, just two terms later, getting this bill up. And the reality is, if they're saying there was no way to deal with that prosecutor who was corrupt, well, he was dealt with in exactly the right way. He was prosecuted, he went to prison. This looks like the thinnest of excuses to control Willis."
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