Jack Smith and Fani Willis likely to start working together against Trump: report
For months now, special counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis have largely been pursuing their criminal cases against former President Donald Trump separately, despite the fact that they are both charging him over the same conduct: trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Willis has even commented on this in an interview with local radio, saying, “I don’t know what Jack Smith is doing and 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.”
But that could be about to change, The Messenger reported on Thursday.
"After fast-moving developments in the cases in recent weeks, Willis and Smith appear likely to get to know each other much better," reported Steve Reilly and Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon. "Four of Trump’s co-defendants in the Fulton County case – former Trump election attorneys Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro and Jenna Ellis, plus Georgia bail bondsman Scott Hall, who was involved in a subplot – have pleaded guilty in recent weeks. Each agreed to provide truthful testimony in the Georgia proceedings as part of their plea deals." Ellis in particular did so in public tearful admission of guilt.
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One possible effect of this, said the report, is that these attorneys made "proffer" agreements to Willis in the Georgia racketeering case, which state the testimony they can provide — meaning Smith could turn around and use that information in his own case against Trump.
“Smith could simply ask for the proffers, and the Georgia prosecutors could provide those proffers to the federal prosecution team,” said UVA law professor Darryl Brown. “There’s nothing improper or unusual in prosecutors in different offices or jurisdictions sharing evidence and other information, unless the Georgia prosecutors specifically promised their defendants that they wouldn’t share that information with other offices."
All of this comes as some experts speculate that Willis and Smith could share former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows as a witness, and as Smith moves to foreclose on Trump using the defense that he was just acting on the advice of lawyers — many of whom are the same lawyers who are now taking guilty pleas.