Legal experts notice Fani Willis told court she wanted to testify despite attorney advice
Legal analysts on MSNBC pointed out discrepancies of the claims made by the defense team accusing District Attorney Fani Willis of a financial scandal that they say should disqualify the Fulton County D.A. office from prosecuting the racketeering trial against Donald Trump and others.
The allegations from this morning's testimony were that Willis and Nathan Wade began having an affair in 2019, which is not what they initially told the court.
Wade disputes this.
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After Wade finished testifying, Willis appeared in the court, ready to tell her side. She later testified that someone from the office said that Wade was done testifying, and she "sprinted" from her office to the courtroom.
"And the lawyer for the office, for the D.A.'s office, wanted to say she doesn't need to testify," MSNBC's Chris Jansing said. "There's no reason for her to testify. Next thing you know, Fani Willis is there, she's walking up past the table, and the last thing she said before she went to sit was, 'I want to go.'"
She meant she wanted to testify. This was against her attorney's objections.
"There's a prosecuting counsel in Georgia," explained legal analyst Lisa Rubin. "The case goes to the prosecuting counsel. It has a single member who's in charge and the decision maker. He'd then assigned the case to one of Georgia's other 49 district attorneys. But I will caution you that that doesn't mean that the case will move along at the same clip. It's not clear that the case will move along at all."
"They could drop the case," said Katy Tur.
"They could drop the case, but they could also stall the case," Rubin continued. "That's what we've seen so far with respect to the investigation of Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones, who was in Fani Willis' sights. She was disqualified from investigating him in 2022 because she held a fundraiser for his Democratic opponent. And at that point in time, the case got handed over to the prosecuting counsel; it's had the case for over six months, and a number of media outlets have written about this. The case hasn't been assigned to anyone. And it's hard to figure out who this case could effectively go to."
"When you talk about that case, it begs the question, she was asked, 'Why were you so sloppy with this, investigating this person, when you had a political fundraiser for their opponent?' You have a conflict, can't get into it, and it raises a question about the entire situation," co-host Katy Tur said.
Former Manhattan assistant D.A. Catherine Christian said that the reality is that it has been bad for Willis but not illegal.
"As I have been watching all day, I have been shaking my head because the reality is that as soon as this professional relationship became personal, Mr. Wade should have left the case, removed voluntarily, got off it, we wouldn't be here today," she said. "As soon as it turned personal. That's when it should have been you're no longer on the trial team. As he's sitting there, I'm saying, why is he still on the trial team?"
She called it an "unforced error" and "bad judgment."
See the discussion in the video below or at the link.
Legal experts notice Fani Willis told court she wanted to testify despite attorney advice youtu.be