fani willis Archives - Home Safety Tech Pros

Unknown white substance delivered to Fani Willis’ office

homesafetytechpros — Sat, 22 Mar 2025 17:52:29 +0000

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis arrives during a hearing on the Georgia election interference case, Friday, March, 1, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Alex Slitz, Pool)

A substantial section of a courthouse in downtown Atlanta was evacuated on Friday in response to a suspicious parcel delivered to the office of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

The parcel, variously described in news reports as a package or a letter, contained an unidentified white substance and led to several people being treated for headaches and dizziness at the scene of the incident, according to the Atlanta Fire & Rescue Department.

The district attorney’s office was briefly under lockdown while a hazardous materials investigation unfolded. Dozens of emergency vehicles arrived as the investigation unfolded.

Ultimately, four people who exhibited symptoms were taken to nearby Grady Memorial Hospital for evaluation and the entire third floor of the courthouse was locked down while the investigation played out. By late Friday afternoon, however, other courthouse and district attorney’s office employees were able to return to work as the substance was found to be safe.

“A package was delivered to the office of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis today,” the district attorney’s office said in a statement obtained by Atlanta-based ABC affiliate WSB-TV. “When opened, an unknown substance was found inside. Four employees have been treated on the scene for symptoms. The District Attorney and her staff greatly appreciate the quick and effective response by Atlanta and Fulton County agencies to the scene to protect our colleagues and the public.”

An employee at the district attorney’s office first noticed the parcel and opened it around 2 p.m. — and alerted the fire department.

Firefighters on the scene made quick work of the call. Roughly 30 minutes after arriving, investigators determined the white powder was some kind of salt or starch and therefore not harmful, Atlanta Fire Rescue Battalion Chief Ronald Slatton told The Associated Press.

More Law&Crime coverage: ‘Substantially groundless and vexatious’: Irate judge orders Fani Willis to pay attorneys fees for ‘intentional’ violations of open records laws in Trump RICO case

“Due to the fact that they were initially giving some signs and symptoms of some type of exposure, we went ahead with a full hazmat response,” Slatton said in comments to WSB-TV.

The fire chief said he did not know who, exactly, the parcel was addressed to — only that it was delivered to the district attorney’s office, according to the AP. Asked about a motive, he also demurred.

“That’s for the law enforcement,” Slatton told the wire service.

Law enforcement, for their part, do not appear too concerned.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Atlanta Police Department referred comment back to the Fire Department. And, when the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office — the agency which oversees courthouse security — was asked about the incident, a spokesperson said they were not investigating.

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A twice elected Democrat, Willis became a figure in national politics when her office famously leveled a 41-count indictment against Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants during the Joe Biden administration in August 2023. To date, however, the prosecution has largely stalled out over ethics issues within Willis’ office — including her former romantic relationship with one of the outside prosecutors brought on to help with the case.

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Judge orders Fani Willis to pay attorneys fees — yet again

homesafetytechpros — Sun, 16 Mar 2025 13:10:20 +0000

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis looks on during a hearing on the Georgia election interference case, Friday, March, 1, 2024, in Atlanta (AP Photo/Alex Slitz, Pool).

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has lost yet another case and is now being ordered to once again pay attorneys fees for her office’s intentional violations of Peach State open records laws.

As Law&Crime previously reported, the final judgment in the matter ancillary to the district attorney’s failed racketeering (RICO) prosecution of President Donald Trump was a foregone conclusion.

In October 2024, the judge overseeing the matter said Willis would lose and be subject to a monetary penalty. On Friday, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Rachel Krause formalized her ruling.

“The law doesn’t apply to you,” the judge sarcastically said during last year’s final hearing in the case — upbraiding a government lawyer.

In the case, attorney Ashleigh Merchant, who represents co-defendant Michael Roman in the underlying RICO prosecution, proved the district attorney’s office violated the Georgia Open Records Act by failing to quickly provide documents related to the employment and remuneration of Nathan Wade — the former special assistant district attorney forced to resign from the Trump case due to his onetime romantic relationship with Willis — and other documents related to how Willis’ office spent large sums of public funds.

Instead, the DA’s office delayed those requests for months and said the law did not apply to them — with one particular employee responsible for the stonewalling. Only when litigation was filed, and a subpoena was served, did the DA’s office comply with the law.

True sunshine filtered through the bureaucratic haze when Dexter Bond, the deputy of operations for the DA’s office, admitted under oath that he responded unfavorably to the plaintiffs based on the identity of the attorney filing the requests and concomitant lawsuit.

That behavior clearly irked the judge.

More Law&Crime coverage: ‘Agreed to produce’: Fani Willis tells court she will finally respond to subpoenas for documents and testimony about Trump RICO prosecution

“As noted during the hearing, Defendants — through the Open Records custodian, Dexter Bond — were openly hostile to counsel for Plaintiff, Ms. Merchant, and testified that Ms. Merchant’s requests were handled differently than other requests,” the court order reads.

Krause explains the problem, at length:

Mr. Bond indicated that he refused to communicate by telephone with Ms. Merchant, despite testifying that his usual practice is to call a requestor to get additional information when a request is unclear. While there is no requirement under the [Open Records Act] for Mr. Bond to call any a requestor about a particular request, Mr. Bond’s handling of Ms. Merchant’s requests in this manner indicates a lack of good faith. The evidence at the hearing also demonstrated that Mr. Bond failed to produce (or meaningfully inquire about) numerous non-disclosure agreements based on his unnecessarily limited interpretation of the request as pertaining only to media agreements. After Mr. Bond consulted with Defendants’ counsel, Mr. Bond understood the request to include “confidentiality” agreements and produced 22 such agreements. Later, an office-wide e-mail was sent, and numerous other agreements were identified and produced. Mr. Bond also testified he did not conduct any searches or make other meaningful search efforts in response to Plaintiff’s request for promotional and “re-branding” materials, claiming he did not know what the request sought and there “were no searches to perform.”

In the end, the judge said, Willis and her underlings “acted without substantial justification” under the relevant Georgia law.

“Defendants’ failures were intentional, not done in good faith, and were substantially groundless and vexatious,” Krause summed up.

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Ultimately, for their perfidy, the DA’s office was ordered to pay Merchant $54,264 in attorneys fees and litigation expenses.

The plaintiffs also received injunctive relief by way of an order directing Willis to finally provide three types of requested documents.

The DA’s office has 30 days to comply with the court’s order to pay or find itself subject to potential additional fees and expenses.

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Fani Willis must turn over tranche of documents to judge

homesafetytechpros — Sat, 01 Mar 2025 00:21:35 +0000

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis arrives during a hearing on the Georgia election interference case, Friday, March, 1, 2024, in Atlanta (AP Photo/Alex Slitz, Pool).

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis must turn over a tranche of documents for a judge’s inspection in a public records case where her office was found to have repeatedly violated open records laws.

As Law&Crime previously reported, those violations occurred when the prosecutor’s office, in response to open records requests, denied having any documents showing any communications with special counsel Jack Smith or members of the since-defunct House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Late last year, in response to a lawsuit filed by the conservative government watchdog group Judicial Watch, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ordered the district attorney’s office to provide the requested documents and/or explain their continued absence, leaving open the possibility of attorney fees.

Now, after falsely claiming any such records exist for months, and after being assessed a fine of $21,578 in attorneys’ fees and costs, Willis and her office admit there are such documents. The DA is continuing to withhold those documents from the nonprofit on the basis that “they are exempt pursuant” to a section of Georgia law.

Following the default judgment, Judicial Watch asked for a special master to scour the agency’s files for the documents or for the court to conduct an in camera inspection of the documents. Willis, in turn fiercely opposed a special master as “incredibly intrusive.”

“Fani Willis was caught red-handed hiding records by Judicial Watch and the court,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “We’re asking the court to appoint a special master because Willis simply can’t be trusted to come clean.”

During a Friday hearing, McBurney said it was simply far too soon to appoint a special master — but made clear he would not discount the necessity of such a move in the future. Formally, that motion was held in abeyance. The majority of the hearing hashed out how to deal with the forthcoming in camera review of the documents in question.

“I can appoint a special master,” McBurney said — but noted that it would be an expensive undertaking that would be paid for by both sides. And in the interest of economy, the judge said he would take the first stab at surveying the files the DA’s office is refusing to turn over.

The court first sought to determine the general universe of documents.

“If it’s 55 pages, we don’t need a special master, I can do that,” McBurney said. “If it’s 5,550 pages, I’m not looking at 5,500 pages. Well, I will, but I’ll get that done over the next four years. And that’s not helpful to anyone.”

Attorney John Monroe, representing Judicial Watch, said there were entirely different concerns about the number of documents at stake.

“Our big concern is we don’t have any confidence in the universe of documents,” Monroe said. “They responded without doing a search. And then they didn’t even do a search until after the complaint was filed. They don’t have any records of what they searched. They say they didn’t search even the cellphones of the six people that they knew were involved in some communication or dialogue or something with the January 6th Committee.”

The nonprofit’s attorney then put a fine point on his argument.

“And then, when you ordered them to do, I think, what would have amounted to, like, the fifth search, when they previously said they didn’t have any records at all — privileged or otherwise — now they say they have some records that are privileged. It’s just very difficult to have any confidence.”

On top of that, the plaintiff’s attorney added, the DA’s office claims they lack the expertise to use a certain piece of property cellphone-searching technology. On this point, the judge jumped in to agree the prosecutors presumably do, in fact, use that specific technology on “every cellphone they seize from a murder defendant.”

Monroe went on to say two reasons support the appointment of a special master. First, he said a special master would alleviate “the horrible lack of confidence in their searching capabilities or effort that they’re putting into it” and could “provide technological support.” Second, he said appointing a special master would help to monitor compliance with the court’s order ”

“There’s just no way to know that there has been compliance,” Monroe summed up.

More Law&Crime coverage: ‘This court disagrees’: Judge strongly rejects ‘absurd’ and legally baseless effort by Fani Willis to avoid subpoenas for documents and testimony about Trump RICO prosecution

The judge, for his part, was highly sympathetic to the plaintiff’s position — even going so far as to offer a detailed criticism of the way the DA’s office has acted in the case up to this point.

“It’s kind of suspicious that you have no documents,” McBurney said — addressing the DA’s lawyer. “And then no documents because we didn’t search. And we did search and we have no documents. Then everything except what he gave the DA’s office is somehow excepted.”

Attorney Brad Bowman, representing the government, said the DA’s office had uncovered around 212 responsive documents — and conceded there were two instances of documents he thought seemed to be missing something “based on what was provided.”

The DA’s lawyer went on to explain that email accounts were searched, as well as physical files. He added that cellphones were also searched but did not know whether the aforementioned proprietary technology was used to search the phones — and he said that technology, Cellebrite, would be employed if needed.

“We do oppose the special master request,” Bowman said.

The DA’s office now, however, was willing to turn the documents over to the court — but insisted they should not be publicly released.

That answer more or less convinced the judge — for now at least.

The judge said he would issue an order in the near future containing deadlines for the DA’s office to comply. That order, the court said, would also direct the DA’s office to provide a detailed affidavit about how the search was conducted — and an appendix with the search terms used to conduct the search. Before any of that, however, the court anticipated some back-and-forth motions practice about what the affidavit and the appendix would contain.

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The plaintiffs, winning on their request for an in camera review, went on to voice concerns about the sufficiency of that relief.

“I’m troubled by the fact that we’re still leaving the DA’s office to their own devices on how to do the search,” Monroe said. “Especially with the track record.”

The judge signaled, quite volubly, that he was sympathetic to those concerns — but made clear the court was not ready to subject the DA’s office to more invasive measures at present.

“You should continue to be the skeptic and voice that skepticism,” McBurney advised — holding out the idea of a special master down the line. “I remain open to that concept, this is a graduated approach. If I look at the 212 pages and am grossly underwhelmed and it’s just patent that there’s got to be other things out there. Then, we’re done with the DA telling the county attorney: ‘Don’t worry, I got this.’ We’ll bring in the professionals. That will be messy. And, so, I won’t do that lightly … No options are off the table.”

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Fani Willis asks court to quash subpoenas about Trump case

homesafetytechpros — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 05:40:49 +0000

Left: Donald Trump speaks at the annual Road to Majority conference in Washington, DC, June 22, 2024 (Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via AP). Right: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis arrives during a hearing on the Georgia election interference case, Friday, March 1, 2024, in Atlanta (AP Photo/Alex Slitz, Pool).

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis recently asked a court in Georgia to put the kibosh on subpoenas issued by state legislators intent on quizzing the prosecutor about her and her office’s efforts to investigate and prosecute President Donald Trump.

Peach State Sen. Bill Cowsert, a Republican who represents the college town of Athens, is the chair of the Senate Special Committee on Investigations. That committee has been looking into Willis for years. Cowsert has been aiming to force Willis to talk on the record about her long-frustrated Trump crusade since last summer.

The locus of the committee’s investigation into the election interference investigation is how, exactly, Willis spent public funds — and whether any earmarked funds were improperly diverted.

The prosecutor was slated to appear and speak under oath at a public hearing in September 2024 — but ultimately she was a no-show.

Around the same time, Cowsert moved to enforce years-old subpoenas for documents and testimony. In turn, Willis and her office filed for a permanent injunction to stop the subpoenas from being enforced. In December, attorneys for the parties argued the general issues in the case as well as for and against the possibility of Willis being held in contempt. The judge overseeing the matter then ruled in the committee’s favor on the basic question of the subpoena power.

Now, the embattled DA says the subpoenas are moot and should be quashed or dismissed entirely. That is, the procedural posture is now different but the hoped-for result is the same: Willis wants the judge to render the subpoenas dead letter.

“[Willis] respectfully requests that the Court dismiss the Former Special Committee’s Application as moot and dismiss this case entirely for lack of jurisdiction,” the motion reads.

In her motion to quash filed late last week, Willis notes that the recent general election necessarily resulted in a new General Assembly being sworn in. the state Senate, for their part, quickly made sure to reauthorize Cowert’s committee. But, Willis says, the details of how that reauthorization occurred preclude the subpoenas from having any real staying power.

“This reauthorization plainly contemplates and creates a new committee, not a continuing one,” the motion reads. “First, the Resolution notes that the Special Committee is ‘recreated and reauthorized’ — not that it is the same committee as the prior one. Next, the Committee members are to be appointed by the Senate Committee on Assignments pursuant to its usual procedures — meaning the committee members will not necessarily be the same (and thus at least hypothetically might not take the same actions as the prior committee). At least one member will be different due to the retirement of a former member.”

Willis does not, however, rely on the novel nature of the committee.

The motion also argues that the rules under which subpoenas can be issued in the new iteration of the committee vary substantially from the older version. Key here, Willis argues, is a new restriction that requires a majority vote before a member can issue a subpoena. The old version of Cowsert’s committee had no such provision in its founding charter, the motion says.

Willis goes on to say that the new committee is also somewhat emboldened — because it is allowed to meet more often.

“In other words, the old Special Committee no longer exists — and therefore lacks the power to enforce its Application or its subpoenas,” the motion goes on. “The new Special Committee possesses whatever powers the former one had — and it has new powers, and restrictions on old ones.”

The DA’s filing offers a hypothetical to argue her point:

Imagine that a prior committee was formed to investigate a policy issue, but some of its members were defeated in their reelection campaigns. Plainly the prior committee could not continue to seek to issue and enforce subpoenas, compel testimony, demand documents and so on after a new General Assembly was sworn in, when at least some of its members (and perhaps the policy goals of the prior committee) were rejected by the electorate.

The motion says the new committee can issue new subpoenas if members are intent on getting the long-ago requested testimony and documents about Fulton County’s Trump-focused investigations — but insist the time has passed on the extant subpoenas.

“The prior General Assembly did not issue its subpoenas until late August of 2024,” the motion concludes. “The deadline for compliance with them was September of 2024. This Court heard and resolved the matter in roughly three months. Should the new Special Committee seek to issue and enforce subpoenas as to Petitioner, it has plenty of time to do so before it expires.”

Read the full Willis filing here.

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Fani Willis and top lieutenant mocked for motion in YSL case

homesafetytechpros — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 17:02:04 +0000

Left: FILE – Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis appears during a hearing regarding defendant Harrison Floyd, a leader in the organization Black Voices for Trump, as part of the Georgia election indictments, Nov. 21, 2023, in Atlanta (Dennis Byron/Hip Hop Enquirer via AP, File). Right: Jeffery “Young Thug” Williams (Law&Crime).

With equal parts derision and seriousness, a Georgia attorney representing one of the defendants in the YSL racketeering (RICO) trial filed a motion on Tuesday castigating the latest tactic employed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her top lieutenant.

The title of the defense motion sums up the current dispute:

Opposition To State’s Motion In Limine To Allow The State To Present All Relevant Evidence To The Jury And To Deny Defendant Objections To The Presentation Of Relevant Evidence On The Basis That Said Evidence Is A “Waste Of Time”

A footnote in the filing by defense attorney Doug Weinstein concedes: “Wow. That is really a mouthful.”

But whatever might be considered unnecessarily loquacious about the title of the defense motion is entirely due to an earlier motion filed by the state, the responding lawyer says.

The prosecution’s motion is titled:

Motion In Limine To Allow The State To Present All Relevant Evidence To The Jury And To Deny Defendant Objections To The Presentation Of Relevant Evidence On The Basis That Said Evidence Is A “Waste Of Time”

While the yearlong-plus trial against Jeffery “Young Thug” Williams and others has mostly been in hiatus this month due to hurricane season and several missing police reports, the state and the defense have continued motions practice.

In the state’s motion, Willis and Fulton Count Chief Deputy District Attorney Adriane Love moved to “present all relevant evidence to the jury and to deny objections to the presentation of relevant evidence on the basis that said evidence is a ‘waste of time.””

In response, Weinstein accused the state of filing a “frivolous” motion that “genuinely merits no response” but said he felt “compelled” to do so because it appeared prosecutors were planning “some form of carpet bombing of additional, pointless, cumulative evidence.”

Such evidence, the defense attorney argued, was “clearly excludable” under the relevant rule of evidence. He also accused prosecutors of “laying down some type of suppression fire” with their motion.

The defense mocks Willis and Love, at length, for the conclusory and unsourced nature of their latest motion:

In a surprisingly succinct and efficient bit of lawyering from the State, the State requests that this Honorable Court deny all future defense 403 Objections regarding the State presenting relevant evidence that is a waste of time. The State cites neither statute, case law, nor the highest law of the land according to the State, Carlson on Evidence, to support its position that the Court take up the challenge of overriding the edicts of the Georgia Legislature, along with virtually every other legislative and judicial body in our nation, by ignoring O.C.G.A. 24-4-403.

The merciless mocking continues.

“Ironically, the State’s motion is a perfect example of the need for this Honorable Court to weigh in on the State wasting the time of all involved in the present case by barring otherwise relevant evidence that is a waste of time under Rule 403,” the defense motion goes on. “In a sense, the motion needs no opposition as the motion itself serves as its own evident opposition.”

Last week, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Paige Reese Whitaker, who assumed control over the long and winding trial after Fulton County Superior Court Chief Judge Ural D. Glanville was recused, criticized Love for “poor lawyering.”

“I can’t figure out what it is,” the judge told the prosecutor. “But it is baffling to me that somebody with your years of experience, time after time, seems to purposefully hide the ball as long as you possibly can.”

Young Thug and five other codefendants — Shannon “SB” Stillwell, Marquavius “Qua” Huey, Deamonte “Yak Gotti” Kendrick, Quamarvious “Qua” Nichols, and Rodalius “Lil Rod” Ryan — face a long trial after an 86-page RICO indictment was filed against 28 total defendants in 2022. Since then, nine defendants have taken plea deals, including Antonio “Mounk Tounk” Sledge and Williams’ brother Quantavious “Unfoonk” Grier. Others have had their cases separated.

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Hearing related to Trump RICO case goes off the rails

homesafetytechpros — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 23:19:51 +0000

Left to right: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis arrives before she speaks after winning the Democratic primary on Tuesday, May 21, 2024, in Buckhead, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson), Fulton County Superior Court Judge Rachel Krause (Fulton County Superior Court), Attorney Ashleigh Merchant speaks in court Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, Pool).

During a marathon Thursday hearing related to the Georgia election interference and racketeering (RICO) case against Donald Trump, the judge overseeing the case lost her patience with both sides.

“Okay. Listen. Everybody. We need to dial all of this back,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Rachel Krause said, interspersing a series of briefly pregnant pauses, her annoyance palpable, as the open records-focused hearing stretched well past hour four.

In the case, attorney Ashleigh Merchant, who represents co-defendant Michael Roman in the underlying RICO matter, has accused Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office of violating the Georgia Open Records Act by failing to provide documents related to the employment and remuneration of Nathan Wade – the former special assistant district attorney forced to resign from the RICO prosecution due to his onetime romantic relationship with Willis.

Earlier on Thursday, Krause gave Merchant a qualified win – allowing her to question a member of the DA’s office, in detail and at length, about the ways those public records requests were handled.

On the stand was Dexter Bond, the deputy of operations for the DA’s office. In his role, he serves as the agency’s records custodian.

After several minutes of preliminary questions about the county’s open records portal, Merchant brought a series of documents up on a public viewing screen. Starting with the DA’s employee handbook entries on public records compliance, the attorney meticulously guided her witness through each document – and throughout his testimony, Bond played the role of a combative witness.

The back-and-forth came to a standstill when Merchant asked Bond if “it was possible” she “believed” the DA’s had complied with a certain public records request. The clear upshot of this question was that Merchant now thinks she was intentionally misled into believing the DA’s office had complied with the request when it had not done so.

An attorney for the DA’s employees objected on grounds of speculation. Though terming the question “pretty argumentative,” Krause overruled and directed the witness to answer.

Bond replied, raising his voice, said: “When it comes to you and what I think you believe, it can be anything, Ashleigh Merchant.”

A few beats passed before the judge laid into the witness and the questioning attorney about their apparently shared lack of respect – and the general tenor of the late afternoon session.

“I feel like instead of being educated, I’m listening to an argument,” Krause said. “And I’m tired of listening to an argument. I would like to be educated about the processes that Mr. Bond follows to perform his duties. And about what you believe, Mrs. Merchant, to be the shortcomings of what those processes are.”

The judge felt obligated to make this intervention after roughly an hour of questioning over various documents. And, to that end, the judge said, the process had been a bit too laborious.

“I would also remind everybody that I can read quite well,” Krause sarcastically intoned. “And that most of what we’re arguing about is reflected in written documents – that are part of the record – that I can review. Now, to the extent that the parties wish to understand what was meant by those words, those are fair questions. But half of our time has been spent with people trying to agree that the document says this or the document says that.”

The judge then essayed a metaphor but cut herself off mid-sentence.

“Let’s just, everybody, take a deep breath, and try not to argue with each other,” Krause went on. “And that applies to Mrs. Merchant and Mr. Bond – in terms of trying to answer the questions so that the court can understand what processes are followed and whether they were followed, or should have been, in this case. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

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Fani Willis slams disqualification appeal in Trump RICO case

homesafetytechpros — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 04:14:55 +0000

Main image: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis testifies during a hearing on the Georgia election interference case, Feb. 15, 2024, in Atlanta. (Alyssa Pointer/Pool Photo via AP); Inset right: Former President Donald Trump waits for the start of a UFC 299 mixed martial arts bout, March 10, 2024, in Miami. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has asked an appeals court not to consider former President Donald Trump’s latest effort to have her removed from his racketeering (RICO) and election subversion case.

On Monday, the district attorney filed a 19-page reply brief asking the Georgia Court of Appeals to turn down a defense effort seeking a review of the trial court judge’s recent decision to keep her in charge.

“There being no error by the trial court, the present application merely reflects the applicants’ dissatisfaction with the trial court’s proper application of well-established law to the facts,” the state’s filing reads. “Because the applicants have wholly failed to carry their burden of persuasion, this Court should decline interlocutory review.”

The defense has been angling to have Willis and her office removed from the case since January — initially over allegations that her romantic relationship with now-former lead prosecutor Nathan Wade created a conflict of interest due to pecuniary motives.

On March 15, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee partially granted the defense motion to disqualify but gave the prosecution the choice of which prosecutor had to go. The court’s order was based on a finding that the one-time romance between Willis and Wade resulted in “a significant appearance of impropriety that infects the current structure of the prosecution team.” Wade resigned hours later.

Now, the defendants insist the trial court’s method of separating the legal issues was “plain legal error requiring reversal” — while basing their interlocutory appeal on the factual record McAfee established.

Willis, however, argues the factual record is actually on her side.

“[T]here was a factual basis for the trial court’s well-explained rulings, and the applicants’ insistence that error occurred amounts to no more than disagreement with the trial court’s assessment of those facts,” the state filing reads. “Dissatisfaction with factual findings is not a basis for the grant of an appeal or the reversal of a trial court’s order, and the application should be denied.”

In the end, McAfee said the defense had not met its burden to show Willis obtained “a material financial benefit as a result of her decision to hire” Wade — or that the “financial gain flowing from her relationship” motivated Willis to prosecute and prolong the case.

The appeal application itself is premised on “forensic misconduct” allegations against Willis over her Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech at Big Bethel A.M.E. Church in Atlanta — a speech that, the defense argued, was a direct public response to the nepotism allegations.

Willis notes that the defense does not take issue with McAfee’s factual findings — just how he applied those facts to relevant law.

“[T]he trial court found that the District Attorney’s public comments concerned either the office’s conviction rates; the charges in the indictment; the procedural posture of the case; the need for or importance of the investigation; or personal anecdotes,” the state’s brief reads. “Insofar as the District Attorney delivered a speech at a local church, the trial court concluded the speech did not ‘cross the line’ because it failed to name any defendant; it did not disclose sensitive or confidential evidence; it did not address the merits of the indicted offenses to move the trial to the court of public opinion; and further, the case is too far removed from jury selection for any actual prejudice or improper effect on the jury pool to actualize.”

The defense, however, claims the district attorney’s church speech contained “inflammatory extrajudicial racial comments” about the defendants and improperly stoked “racial animus” to influence would-be jurors in retaliation for, and in order to deflect from, the allegations raised in the motion to disqualify. Their appeal cites McAfee’s own withering estimation of the speech in which the trial court criticizes Willis for using the speech “to cast racial aspersions at an indicted defendant’s decision” over the disqualification motion.

Willis shrugs away those concerns in a footnote:

The trial court noted the District Attorney’s comment that individuals were “playing the race card” and her references to the different races of three special prosecutors. Although the trial court found that “the effect” was to “cast racial aspersions” at the decision to file the motion to disqualify, it is no surprise the court still found no basis to disqualify the District Attorney. Factual passing references to the various races of members of a prosecuting team are hardly the type of egregious commentary contemplated by [case law] to warrant disqualification. And a comment suggesting individuals were “playing the race card” is too vague, brief, and limited in scope to imply any defendant harbored racial prejudice, particularly to the point of requiring disqualification.

In declining to toss the district attorney, the trial court said the case was simply too far away from trial for a potential jury pool to have been tainted by the church speech — but did suggest the defense would be well within their rights, and likely to succeed, should the defendants base a gag order request on the speech.

The defense claims the trial court erred in a big way — a constitutional due process violation — when McAfee made the “erroneous failure” not to disqualify Willis, and her office, from the case.

Willis, again, argues the lower court got it right — and that there is just no need for the appellate court to even consider the case.

“There is simply no trial court error to be found in the decision to deny disqualification,” the state’s brief continues. “Days of evidence and testimony failed to disclose anything like a calculated pre-trial plan designed to prejudice the defendants or secure their convictions. The applicants have not identified any public statement injecting the District Attorney’s personal belief as to the defendants’ guilt or appealing to the public weighing of evidence.”

Additionally, the defense claims Willis made a “false statement” in a court document and later lied under oath about her relationship. That was also forensic misconduct, the defendants say, and the judge — who strongly intimated that Willis was not truthful when forced to account for her eventually acknowledged relationship with Wade — again failed by not using those alleged lies as the basis to disqualify.

“[A]n odor of mendacity remains,” the judge opined. “[R]easonable questions about whether the District Attorney and her hand-selected lead SADA testified untruthfully about the timing of their relationship further underpin the finding of an appearance of impropriety and the need to make proportional efforts to cure it.”

Willis elides the trial court’s criticism by noting that McAfee did not, in fact, outright accuse her of lying to cover up the affair.

“The trial court’s order evinces that the judge carefully considered the District Attorney’s and Wade’s testimony, but the court made no factual finding of false testimony or a false affidavit,” the state’s brief goes on. “In requesting a contrary finding on this issue, the applicants would have this Court invade the province of the trial court and make additional factual findings. This it cannot do. Because interlocutory review is clearly not permissible on this ground, this argument should be rejected.”

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Fani Willis and Trump RICO defense argue over new witnesses

homesafetytechpros — Sun, 10 Mar 2024 09:26:10 +0000

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis during a hearing on the Georgia election interference case, Friday, March 1, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Alex Slitz, Pool)

Embattled Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and a defense attorney argued over the introduction of new evidence in the ongoing disqualification drama, threatening to derail the racketeering (RICO) and election subversion case against former President Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, the district attorney’s office filed a five-page response with the Fulton County Superior Court arguing that two new proposed witnesses should not be allowed to testify about their knowledge of Willis’ admitted relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.

On Friday, attorney Craig Gillen, in a four-page reply, took Willis to task for her office’s opposition to one would-be witness in particular.

“The irony of the staff of one district attorney’s office objecting to a member of another district attorney’s office prepared to come forward and testify regarding the disqualification of a district attorney should not be lost on the Court,” the filing reads.

Gillen represents co-defendant David Shafer, the onetime Georgia GOP chair who prosecutors say was integral to the fake electors plot.

As Law&Crime previously reported, Shafer’s request proposes the testimony of Cindi Lee Yeager, a prosecutor in nearby Cobb County.

Yeager’s testimony was offered to substantiate claims made by Terrence Bradley, Wade’s former divorce lawyer and law partner, regarding the timeline of the DA’s relationship with the man she put in charge of the most consequential criminal case in Peach State history.

Bradley said the two prosecutors “absolutely” began dating before Willis hired Wade — but those claims were made out of court. When testifying under oath, Bradley said he could “not recall” or was only “speculating” about various details regarding the Willis-Wade relationship — including when the since-admitted tryst began.

The timeline of the affair is widely considered to be crucial.

Wade was hired on Nov. 1, 2021. The crux of the defense’s argument for removing Willis and Wade is that the district attorney hired her then-boyfriend for the job and reaped something akin to a financial windfall. Testimony that could establish the relationship began years before November 2021 would be highly damaging to the state.

Yeager says when Bradley testified, he made several statements “directly contrary” to what he told her during “numerous” conversations between August 2023 and January 2024, the earlier filing from Shafer offering the prosecutor’s testimony claims.

“Mr. Wade had definitely begun a romantic relationship with Ms. Willis during the time that Ms. Willis was running for District Attorney in 2019 through 2020,” the March 4 filing claims Bradley told Yeager. “Mr. Bradley stated that he had personal knowledge of the relationship between Mr. Wade and District Attorney Willis.”

Later the same day, a markedly similar filing was made offering testimony from Atlanta-based defense attorney Manny Arora.

“Between September through October 2023, Mr. Arora had several conversations with attorney Terrence Bradley regarding the relationship between District Attorney Wills and Nathan Wade,” the motion on behalf of co-defendant Cathy Latham reads.

Arora says Bradley told him Wade and Willis “had definitely begun a romantic relationship” when the district attorney was first campaigning for her job between 2019 and 2020.

The next day, the district attorney’s office objected to either Yeager or Arora being allowed to testify in the disqualification case.

“The law fundamentally favors finality,” the state’s response reads. “It does not allow for endless re-hearings and reopening of evidence based simply upon regret about prior strategy, consistently unsubstantiated positions or political incentive.”

Calling the offers of proposed testimony a “last minute, self-serving barrage,” Willis and her lieutenant Adam Abbate argue the Yeager and Arora testimony would be repetitive and “impermissible hearsay.”

The state also suggests that Yeager’s testimony is intended to help her boss fend off a challenger in an upcoming election.

“Attorney Yeager is employed as second-in-command to Cobb County District Attorney Flynn Brody, whose reelection is currently being challenged by a Deputy District Attorney of the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office,” the response says. “The timing of Attorney Yeager’s proposed testimony is not coincidental.”

Closing arguments in the disqualification hearing were held last week — but that is not much of a barrier should Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee decide the Yeager-Arora evidence is worth hearing under oath. Trial court judges in Georgia have wide latitude to reopen the evidentiary record — they can do so more or less at will.

“In the interest of the ascertainment of the truth relating to the serious issues of prosecutorial misconduct raised by the defense, the Court should decline to strike the proposed testimony of Deputy Chief Assistant District Attorney Yeager and Mr. Arora, and should reopen the evidence to hear and consider their testimony,” Shafer’s latest motion concludes.

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Jeffrey Clark says Fulton County DA’s office allowed perjury

homesafetytechpros — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 22:02:29 +0000

Left: Former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark in Washington, D.C., June 13, 2023. (AP Photo/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades) Right: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in Atlanta on Aug. 14, 2023. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

Arguments continue to be made in the disqualification controversy targeting Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade as the judge overseeing the matter considers the evidence and relevant legal standards.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee is, inevitably, being inundated with post-hearing filings as 15 co-defendants still remain in the racketeering (RICO) and election subversion case against Donald Trump. Most, if not all, of those co-defendants have signed onto the effort to remove Willis and her entire office from the case.

An 11-page brief filed in Fulton County Superior Court on Wednesday by co-defendant Jeffrey Clark, a former U.S. Department of Justice lawyer charged in the fake electors plot, accuses Willis of ratifying perjury, misstating the law, and several “actual” conflicts of interest.

Clark is an environmental lawyer whom Trump nearly tapped to be acting attorney general in his failed scramble to retain the presidency after losing to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Clark previously worked as an assistant attorney general at one sub-agency within the DOJ and as an acting assistant attorney general within another.

The charges against Clark are based on an unsent draft letter falsely claiming the DOJ “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple states, including the state of Georgia.” Clark’s draft also called on officials to convene the state legislature and consider advancing a slate of contingent, or fake, electors committed to voting for Trump in the Electoral College.

Clark’s filing, prepared by Harry MacDougald, is stylized as a reply to the district attorney’s supplemental post-hearing brief — but begins by discussing an issue that the state’s brief did not address at all.

Instead, the filing centers an argument that Willis, and attorneys in her office, bear some measure of responsibility for perjury allegedly committed by Wade during the disqualification hearing.

Wade has said different things about the unraveling of his marriage — specifically regarding his marital fidelity — in his responses to two different sets of interrogatories. During his testimony in February, he attempted to excuse those inconsistencies filed in court documents.

Clark says Wade lied and that Willis had a duty to correct those lies.

“Wade obviously lied under oath in his testimony on February 15, 2024 when he was attempting to explain his obviously false interrogatory responses in his divorce case,” the reply reads. “We are now 20 days past that testimony. In that intervening period, the District Attorney has said and done nothing whatsoever to either disavow Mr. Wade’s perjured testimony or require him to correct it.”

Categorizing this alleged failure as a “spectacular breach” of her duty, Clark’s filing argues Willis has violated her duty of candor under the professional rules of conduct that govern Peach State lawyers.

“The reason for this state of affairs is obvious — it is in the District Attorney’s personal, individual interests that Mr. Wade’s perjury go uncorrected,” the reply goes on. “Ms. Willis has ratified Mr. Wade’s perjury by not repudiating it as her duty requires. The District Attorney’s professional judgment has not been merely impaired by her conflicts of interest, it has been corrupted beyond redemption.”

Clark’s defense attorney previously raised Wade’s alleged perjury during his own closing arguments in the hearing last week.

“The husband is hiding things from his wife,” MacDougald said. “He lied in his interrogatories and then he got on that stand and lied about lying in his interrogatories. And the lawyers for the DA, the DA’s office, they just sat there and let him do it. They did nothing to correct obviously perjured testimony. And that’s reason enough to disqualify all of them.”

The issue with Wade’s testimony — along with various other aspects of Wade’s long-running divorce case — are later cited to as relevant to four (out of six) “actual conflicts” that have arisen since Willis and Wade were accused of nepotism and self-dealing in a January motion filed by co-defendant and Trump 2020 campaign staffer Mike Roman.

One such actual conflict was the unusual decision by the district attorney herself to file a nonparty motion in Wade’s divorce to obtain a protective order against Wade’s estranged wife, Clark argues.

“In that filing the District Attorney violated Rule of Professional Conduct 3.4(h) by abusing the power of her office to threaten her boyfriend’s wife with criminal prosecution to gain advantage for herself and her boyfriend in her boyfriend’s divorce,” the reply reads. “This is also an actualized conflict of interest in which she advanced her personal interests and those of Mr. Wade to the detriment of her professional duties.”

The state has attempted, with questionable success so far, to convince McAfee that an actual conflict of interest is the legal standard by which a prosecutor can be removed from a case in Georgia.

In their supplemental brief, the state also essayed an even higher burden on the defense which would apply the “actual conflict” standard to a very specific set of facts. Namely, that a prosecutor must have a monetary interest in the outcome of a case.

MacDougald rubbished that theory as not in accord with the law.

“This ignores that a prosecutor’s statutory duty of impartiality inheres in every official act they take, not just conviction,” the reply reads. “The enforcement process has a milestone at the point of conviction but the process obviously begins earlier.”

The reply goes on to cite case law in Georgia which, it claims, stands for the proposition that “indictments were to be quashed if the personal interest existed when the case was presented to the grand jury.”

Clark’s reply likens those facts to the present case, at length:

Here, Mr. Wade was paid over $650,000 over a two-year period beginning long before the indictment and long before any conviction, and the District Attorney received gifts from him during this period. She therefore had a personal interest in the case that was operative at the time of indictment. The State’s suggestion that this does not matter because the interest must be in conviction alone should be rejected because it is premised on the false notion that prosecutors have no duties of impartiality at any other time in the progress of a criminal case.

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New witness could doom Fani Willis’ Trump prosecution

homesafetytechpros — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 02:42:47 +0000

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis looks on during a hearing on the Georgia election interference case, on Friday, March 1, 2024, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Alex Slitz, Pool)

A senior prosecutor in the Atlanta area has evidence suggesting Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade began their romantic relationship several years before the embattled pair testified it started, a Monday court filing alleges.

The latest salvo in the monthslong effort to disqualify Willis from the racketeering (RICO) and election interference case she brought against Donald Trump comes in an eleventh-hour motion to reopen the evidence. That motion seeks to subpoena a new witness and was filed by co-defendant David Shafer, the onetime Georgia GOP chairman who prosecutors claim was integral to the fake electors plot.

Shafer’s filing, prepared by attorney Craig Gillen, alleges the new witness will substantiate claims made by Terrence Bradley regarding the timeline of the DA’s relationship with the man she put in charge of the most consequential criminal case in Peach State history. At the same time, the motion also says the new witness will refute a key part of Bradley’s testimony about the nature of his prior claims.

After watching Bradley’s testimony, Co-Chief Deputy District Attorney for Cobb County Cindi Lee Yeager spoke with two defense attorneys on the phone and took issue with many statements made by Nathan Wade’s former divorce attorney and law partner, the filing says.

Bradley, in text messages to defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant, said the two “absolutely” began dating before Willis hired Wade. He also said, with an air of certainty, the affair began when Willis was a municipal court judge — giving it a romantic vintage of 2019-2020.

On the stand last week, however, Bradley was little more than evasive. He hedged and blurred his prior statements by saying those claims were based on a lone conversation with Wade but, ultimately, nothing more than speculation. And, he adamantly refused under oath to offer anything close to a date for when the relationship began — saying he could not recall why he previously seemed to be so sure about the timeline.

Yeager says Bradley made several statements on the stand “directly contrary” to what he told her during “numerous” conversations between August 2023 and January 2024, the filing claims.

“Mr. Wade had definitely begun a romantic relationship with Ms. Willis during the time that Ms. Willis was running for District Attorney in 2019 though 2020,” the filing claims Bradley told Yeager. “Mr. Bradley stated that he had personal knowledge of the relationship between Mr. Wade and District Attorney Willis.”

Closing arguments in the disqualification matter have already occurred — but that is not much of a barrier should Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee decide Yeager’s evidence is worth hearing under oath. Trial court judges in Georgia have wide latitude to reopen the evidentiary record — they can do so more or less at will.

In this particular case, both the state and Trump himself have requested, prior to Shafer’s filing, that the evidence be reopened. Last week, McAfee said it would probably take him around two weeks to finally rule on the motion to disqualify Willis and her office.

During their closing, the state repeatedly referenced the testimony of another witness, Robin Yeartie, a former employee of the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office who said she and Willis had long been “best friends.” During the first day of the hearing, Yeartie testified Willis and Wade first became romantic in late 2019.

During the hearings, both the prosecutors and the defense addressed claims that Willis and Wade used a condominium she rented from Yeartie as a romantic meetup location. Cellular phone records legally obtained by the defense suggest Wade visited the condo on numerous occasions and likely spent the night there on two occasions prior to the admitted time when the affair began.

The Shafer filing references this aspect of the case, alleging Bradley told Yeager “details regarding” Willis’ and Wade’s “use of Ms. Robin Yeartie’s apartment and other meetings prior to November 2021.”

The crux of the defense’s argument for removing Willis and Wade is that the district attorney hired her then-boyfriend for the job in November 2021 and reaped something akin to a financial windfall.

The financial aspect of the allegations against the prosecutors are only obliquely referenced in the Shafer filing — if at all.

But, the money-related aspect of the latest defense motion includes a potentially separate pitfall for Willis herself.

In his own testimony, Bradley gave the impression that he rarely, if ever, spoke to Willis. On the stand last month, he testified that he “did not personally know” her and said: “My interaction with Ms. Willis was never where I would pick up the phone and talk to her.”

According to the filing, Yeager will directly contradict Bradley’s in-court estimation of his relationship with Willis.

From the motion, at length (emphasis in original):

In or around September of 2023, Mr. Bradley was visiting Ms. Yeager in her office when Mr. Bradley received a telephone call. Ms. Yeager could hear that the caller was District Attorney Willis. District Attorney Willis was calling Mr. Bradley in response to an article that was published about how much money Mr. Wade and his law partners had been paid in this case. Ms. Yeager heard District Attorney Willis tell Mr. Bradley: “They are coming after us. You don’t need to talk to them about anything about us.”

Defense attorneys have tried to make hay out of claims that Wade has been overpaid for his work and is otherwise not sufficiently qualified for the job his then-girlfriend allegedly hired him to do. Those arguments have not made much traction in McAfee’s courtroom.

The bigger issue with Yeager’s alleged claim about the phone call, rather, is if Bradley misrepresented his relationship with the district attorney — and the district attorney’s office did not correct the record for the court. If the judge finds Yeager, a neighboring prosecutor, a credible witness, that could spell big trouble for the prosecution.

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