Understandably, the voters of Fulton County would be ready for change after all the revelations that have occurred during Fani’s tenure as district prosecutor in Fulton County. But somehow, Democrats from Fulton County voted overwhelmingly to send Willis to the general elections in November.
Willis beat her opponent, Christian Wise Smith (an attorney and a writer), by 89.4% compared to 10.6%. WSB Radio reported that the Associated Press had called the race within a quarter hour of the polls closing.
Willis ran for 2020 as a candidate against corruption, positioning herself to be an alternative to then-incumbent Prosecutor Paul Howard. She didn’t have to wait long before she enmeshed her office in her corruption.
Willis loved the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), and its use in high-profile criminal cases led to her downfall. Willis’ prosecution of rapper Young Thug, and his gang, was a comedy-of-errors with investigators and attorneys slamming witnesses and attorneys tipped off gangsters.
She must have believed that her RICO case against Donald Trump would make her famous. The case was rife with conflicts of interest right from the start: She campaigned on behalf of Democrat Charlie Bailey, for lieutenant-governor, and a judge disqualified from investigating Bailey’s GOP opponent, Burt Jones. Jones won that November. Bailey’s spouse works as Willis’s spokesperson.
Willis hired Nathan Wade as her special attorney in the Trump case. Wade had little RICO-related experience. This hire had one major flaw: Wade was having an affair with Willis. Willis became defensive and indignant after the news of her affair was revealed. She made a bizarre church speech the Sunday before Martin Luther King Day, in which she claimed to be a victim and imagined having a conversation with God.
The hearing for her conflict of interest investigation became a circus-worthy affair, with the Willis Wade affair being discussed in public and her strange habit of carrying cash stacks around “wherever I lie my head,” as she put it. Judge Scott McAfee then gave her the ultimatum to either drop Wade or resign. Wade instead resigned.
Willis maintains that any attempts to hold her responsible for her actions are unjustified. She refused to cooperate in federal and state investigations and told Rachel Maddow, on MSNBC, that Georgia’s Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission is a tool used to target minority prosecutors. The conditions in Fulton County had gotten so bad that one state legislator sued Willis, along with others, for refusing prosecution of crimes.
Willis refused to debate Smith because she was so confident in her ability to avoid accountability. Smith debated Willis behind an empty podium at the Atlanta Press Club.
Willis will be facing Courtney Kramer in November, who was unopposed during the GOP primary. McAfee also easily won his election as the judge who presided over the Trump case.
