(NewsNation) — Last week, I called for something which I knew was highly controversial. I said that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should drop her case against former President Donald Trump after federal officials indicted him for basically the same conduct. Not because she doesn’t have a case — Willis certainly has the legal ability and right to move forward — but I argued it simply wasn’t the right thing to do.
I stand by what I said now that Willis and her office have officially indicted Trump and 18 other codefendants in a 41-count indictment, 13 of which are against Trump himself. It’s a wide-ranging racketeering case alleging Trump and his allies conspired to reject the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
Now, my comments were never related to the others, just the former president. Let me be clear, this indictment reminds us of the absurd lengths that Trump and his team went to try to overturn the actual results of the election.
Trump, of course, denies the charges and has set his own news conference for next week. He says he will present “a large, complex, detailed but irrefutable report on the presidential election fraud which took place in Georgia” which he says will lead to a “complete exoneration” of him.
We shall see. But there are two main reasons that remain as to why Willis shouldn’t be doing this.
No. 1: The federal case makes the Georgia case against Trump duplicative and unnecessary. No. 2: Willis’ case is riddled with conflicts and political considerations that will be easy for the Trump team to exploit.
Willis bringing this case is just bad for everyone, and I mean everyone.
The more important issue is that the federal indictment makes Willis’ case unnecessary. It goes into depth on the Georgia allegations and both indictments highlight similar quotes.
Do we need another case brought on basically the same set of facts?
Jack Smith goes state by state in the federal indictment, very meticulously addressing conduct. So, now are prosecutors in other states going to bring cases against Trump, too? Now, that is different from charging the actual fake electors as Michigan and now Georgia have done.
The biggest argument I hear again and again is that if Trump is reelected, he couldn’t make state charges go away, only federal. That’s true, but that is not a reason for a prosecutor to act and there is no way the state trial is going to happen any time soon.
And if Trump wins the 2024 election, the U.S. Supreme Court barely let Bill Clinton get sued while in office; they will not let a state prosecutor try the sitting president of the United States in a criminal case.
That could be why Willis has pledged to do the impossible, which is to get this case to trial within the next six months. She currently has a gang-related RICO case that is still in its eighth month of jury selection.
But, even the DOJ itself has a policy seeking to limit multiple prosecutions. It says: “The purpose of this policy is to protect persons charged with criminal conduct from the burdens associated with multiple prosecutions and punishments for substantially the same act(s) or transaction(s), to promote efficient utilization of department resources, and to promote coordination and cooperation between federal and state prosecutors.”
The reverse should be true, as well. But, it’s not just that. It’s also Willis’ conduct before Monday night.
She has given more than three dozen media interviews on the investigation. Even the judge overseeing the grand jury said she is “on national media almost nightly talking about the investigation.”
In many of those interviews, she repeatedly kept hinting at the outcome of the case. In the end, it was certainly not a question of if the indictment would come, but when.
Her explanations for why it’s taken two and a half years to get here have made little sense.
“The right to have your vote protected is a serious one and so, you know, I’ve told people many times I’m not going to be rushed. We are doing what is needed for justice,” Willis said in one interview.
That can’t be true. With the special counsel, the delay is more easily understood. Attorney General Merrick Garland likely wasn’t going to bring charges against Trump for trying to overturn the election. Even after the Jan. 6 committee’s criminal referrals, it sure didn’t seem the attorney general was going to act on it, much to the frustration of liberals.
Then, the documents case landed on his lap with the former president seemingly trying to prevent the DOJ from getting back highly sensitive government documents stored at Mar-A-Lago.. At that point, Garland apparently feels he has to deal with it and eventually he appoints a special counsel who then essentially takes it where he wants. That explains that delay.
Jack Smith has only been investigating since November of last year, but what could possibly have taken Willis this long? It took her a year to even request a special purpose grand jury. Why? And that “special purpose” grand jury was just advisory. They heard evidence for eight months and then clearly recommended indictments in February. We know that because the foreperson, just like Willis, sort of hinted at it in an interview.
“We definitely heard a lot about former President Trump and we definitely discussed him a lot in the room. And I’ll say that when this list comes out, there are no major plot twists waiting for you,” the foreperson said.
It all felt like a game. Meanwhile, Willis has also regularly appeared to express her own personal opinions that what Trump did was illegal. After all, the key legal question is: Did he have corrupt intent?
Willis has long made it clear that in Trump’s call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, where he asked the secretary of state to “find” 11,780 votes, that he had that corrupt intent, even before the indictment ever came down.
“You look at facts to see did they really have intent? Did they know what they were doing? Detailed facts become important, like asking for a specific number and going back and investigating and understanding that number is one more than the number that is needed. It lets you know someone had a clear mind that they knew what they were doing,” Willis said in a 2021 interview.
So, if you know that, why has it taken two and a half years? Yes, the RICO case she’s now charging is sweeping and has moving parts that took time. But it still just feels like she has been milking this.
That’s not all. She has also overtly politicized it. Last July, less than two weeks after Willis subpoenaed South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, she used her campaign Twitter account to tweet out a cartoon.
The cartoon showed her fishing Graham out of a swamp with what appears to be a depiction of Trump saying: “I know you’ll do the right thing for the swamp, Lindsey.” All the while, her campaign was using the account to solicit donations.
Can you imagine if that was a Republican prosecutor seemingly exploiting the subpoena of a progressive liberal Democrat to solicit campaign donations? There would be no end to the mainstream media’s hysteria.
But this wasn’t the only time Willis and her surrogates referenced the Trump investigation to solicit followers, tweets and donations for her campaign. And that doesn’t even address the actual documented conflict of interest she had.
Willis subpoenaed alleged fake elector Burt Jones, a Republican state senator who at the time of the subpoena was running for lieutenant governor. Willis then hosted a fundraiser for Jones’ political opponent.
Jones went on to win the election, but Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney could not believe the actions of Willis. In a hearing, he called what she did a “what are you thinking?” moment.
Look, Willis is too far in politically to let this go. I understand that. I also get the arguments about accountability, pardons and state vs. federal cases.
But, I think the right thing to do would have been to let the feds handle a case that is about conduct by the president of the United States while he was president.
And to those who desperately want to see Trump locked up and believe that any prosecution of him is a noble one, well you may come to regret this case. Already Monday, there was the release of what appeared to be a draft indictment of Trump hours before the official indictment was handed up.
The DA’s office called the document “fictitious” but in fact, the charges listed on it turned out to be identical to the final indictment. They weren’t the final charges, but it was a huge blunder and one Willis wasn’t even willing to address.
“No, I can’t tell you anything about what you refer to. What I can tell you is that we had a grand jury here in Fulton County. They deliberated until almost 8 o’clock, if not right after 8 o’clock. An indictment was returned and it was true billed. And you now have an indictment. I am not an expert on clerk’s duties or even administrative duties so I wouldn’t know how to work that system and so I’m not going to speculate,” Willis said.
Except, it immediately gave the Trump team a legitimate argument. I am betting this case will end up giving Trump and his supporters many more legitimate arguments to make about the unfairness the prosecutor and the process.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author, and not of NewsNation.
