A disclaimer upfront: I am a huge Fani Willis fan.
I love everything about the Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney: her confidence, her way of arguing in court, the trailblazing nature of her role as the first Black woman DA there. History will fondly remember Willis if she can deftly handle her immediate crisis: unwinding the arrangement in which she hired an outside lawyer — with whom she is romantically linked — to help prosecute her election conspiracy case against former President Donald Trump.
Willis noted correctly that the relationship has nothing to do with the strength of her RICO case against Trump and his 18 co-defendants.
In a 176-page court filing Friday, Willis acknowledged a “personal relationship” with Nathan Wade, a well-respected attorney and former judge, and she noted correctly that the relationship has nothing to do with the strength of her RICO case against Trump and his 18 co-defendants.
But in the court of public opinion that doesn’t matter as much. Either Willis or Wade should step aside. My preference is Wade since Willis was elected by the people of Fulton County. Doing so is not just the right thing to do for the sake of optics; it is consistent with the high standard she promised voters in 2020.
That same year, a sexual harassment lawsuit was filed against then-incumbent District Attorney Paul Howard by a former employee who said he’d wrongly fired her. When Willis, who was running against Howard, was asked about that case on “The Patricia Crayton Show,” she said, “I certainly will not be choosing people to date that work under me. Let me just say that.”
(Howard, who months after Willis’ answer was found not liable in that civil case, acknowledged he’d had a sexual relationship with the terminated employee, but he disputed her claim that they’d slept together while he was her boss and said the sexual relationship had ended before she worked in his office.)
To be clear: No one is accusing Willis of sexual…
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