Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis at the Fulton County Courthouse on November 21, 2023, in Atlanta, Georgia. | Source: Pool / Getty
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has been under constant attack by MAGA America ever since she oversaw the indictments of Donald Trump and 18 others accused of attempting to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia illegally. On Sunday, during a visit to the Big Bethel A.M.E. Church in Atlanta, Willis addressed allegations leveled at her by one of the 14 remaining co-defendants who accused her of having an improper romantic relationship with private attorney Nathan Wade, who is acting as a Special Prosecutor in the case, and who defense attorneys are alleging is unqualified to do his job.
First, let’s get into some of what Willis had to say. From USA Today:
Willis talked about how she hired two other lawyers – a white man and white woman – to also help her prosecute Trump and his co-defendants for allegedly trying to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia that Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
Describing each one as a “superstar,” she asked, “Isn’t it them playing the race card when they only question one?”
“The Black man I chose has been a judge more than 10 years, run a private practice more than 20, represented businesses in civil litigation — I ain’t done y’all,” Willis said. “Served as a prosecutor, a criminal defense lawyer, special assistant attorney general.”
Now, in the interest of fairness, it’s worth pointing out that Willis never mentioned Wade by name or directly addressed the allegations that she had a romantic relationship with him, but she did mention that she is an “imperfect” and “flawed” human being who makes mistakes, which some might take as an indication that the allegations against her are at least somewhat true. Those allegations, which were filed in court last Monday by former Trump campaign official Michael Roman, include an accusation that Willis paid Wade more than $650,000 in taxpayer money to be a special prosecutor in the case despite him lacking the “relevant experience” needed to prosecute a high-profile RICO case like this one. “Roman also alleged that Wade used some of that money to finance lavish vacations with Willis, including trips to California wine country and Florida and excursions on Caribbean cruises,” USA Today reported.
Here’s the thing, though: Roman, whose motion seeks to disqualify Willis, Wade and the entire Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, has presented all of these allegations, but has not offered a shred of evidence, let alone proof, to back it up—and that right there is just par for the MAGA world course.
Roman called Willis’ alleged actions an attempt to “defraud the public of honest services,” which is rich coming from an attorney defending a former president who launched a campaign of allegations that election fraud cost him to lose to President Joe Biden without a shred of evidence. He claimed voting machines were rigged to change Trump votes to Biden votes without a shred of evidence. He and Rudy Giuliani claimed (and continue to claim) that election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss were involved in the fictional election fraud without a shred of evidence.
Hell, while we’re at it, Trump previously accused Willis of being a “young racist” who had an affair with a “gang member” without a shred of evidence to support either claim. In fact, Trump has zeroed in on all of the Black prosecutors who have launched cases against him, calling them racist without offering a shred of evidence that any of them have done or said anything racist. (And while they’re accusing Willis of playing the race card in her own defense, they haven’t said a word about the numerous times Trump did the same without evidence or even any specific behavior to substantiate his claims.)
There’s a pattern here.
There’s a pattern of white conservatives accusing Black people in high positions of being unqualified despite their full resumes and calling them affirmative action or DEI hires simply because they’re Black, not because anything they have been accused of has been proven. There’s also a pattern here of Trump supporters taking substance-less allegations as fact regarding any and all Trump opponents (especially the Black ones).
147 Republican legislators voted to overturn a legal election because they took Trump’s baseless allegations at face value. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called for a state probe into Willis based on proofless allegations that she and other Republican legislators took at face value—which Willis also addressed Sunday.
Aside from all of that, conservatives are pretending to take some kind of moral high ground by harping on the possibility that Willis had a consenting relationship with a man who had recently divorced his wife while shilling for a man who has boasted about grabbing random women by their genitals and a man who has been accused of sexual misconduct and infidelity throughout all of his marriages.
Listen: If it is true that Willis had a relationship with Wade, then it was certainly a mistake to tap him as the Special Prosecutor in a case that has already been under relentless public scrutiny. But until we see the evidence, all we can see is the pattern of politics replacing legality, baseless allegations being taken as fact through sheer repetition, and Black officials being targeted and having their credentials questioned by white officials without discernable reason.
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