Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis had a Perry Mason moment in a Georgia courthouse yesterday when she appeared ready to testify in what seemed unbeknownst to her district attorney subordinates. Fani Willis set the tone for her testimony the moment she asked for some defense exhibits to be made available to her after taking the stand. Minutes before she all but demanded to take the witness box, the assistant district attorneys were in the middle of making a motion to squash her need to testify. DA Willis purposefully strode to the stand in a manner that any Black person in America has seen, from a strong, determined Black woman, and your first thought is—uh-oh!
Ms. Willis testified she had to move out of her home and worry about the safety of her elderly father, who lived with her, as well as her children. She is under constant threat and has been living under security scrutiny to ensure her safety. So, with all the sturm and drang surrounding Donald Trump, the thought that someone would purposely put themselves in the crosshairs of the violent Trump cult is absurd. But that is precisely what the myriad of lawyers for the eighteen defendants in a Rico case brought by Ms. Willis is asserting. The crux of the hearing is that two very successful lawyers, one who was in private practice and the other having just left a judgeship—aside from also having a private practice of her own before running for District Attorney, were so hard up for money that Fani Willis indicted the former president to get Fulton County to bankroll her love life.
That scenario would not even pass the smell test of a bad Hollywood soap opera. What can be called into question was Ms. Willis and the man in question, special prosecutor Nathan Wade, crossing their professional lives with pleasure. Romances between attorneys are nothing new in courtrooms,à laMarcia Clark and Christopher Darden in the O.J. Simpson murder case. Obviously, to anyone willing to read or listen to the lawyers for the eighteen people charged with trying to change the election results, the hope is that the public, along with the media, gets caught up in the minutia of salacious allegations of sex, money, and romantic getaways swaying the public, hence a future jury’s mind.
The righteous indignation of DA Willis yesterday was rife with anger, pointed denials, and admonished one of the defense attorneys, saying, “So I would ask you not yell at me.” At one point, Willis contemptuously dropped the exhibits handed to her when she took the stand, characterizing them as “lies.” She successfully sparred with the attorneys, and the repetitive nature of the questions [so] annoyed Judge Scott McAfee he told one lawyer, Harry MacDougald, to essentially sit down. All the drama and pointless harangue of the defense lawyers was recentered when Willis stated what the case is really about:
“You’ve been intrusive in people’s personal lives. You’re confused. You think I’m on trial. These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020,”Willis said, gesturing to the defense table. “I’m not on trial no matter how hard you try to put me on trial.”
Despite the collective defense attorneys' efforts to make Fani Willis into a gold-digging trollop bent on fleecing the state of money to finance her tawdry affairs, Ms. Willis shut that down with one short statement, “I don't need anything from a man. A man is not a plan. A man is a companion.”
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