You might have missed it, but a sad event took place last week in the legal cases against Donald Trump. It was the final dismissal of the case in Georgia. The one where they had Trump on tape, saying,
“All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. I just want to find 11,780 votes. Give me a break fellas.”
They had this mothereffer on tape! They had him on tape!
And we still didn’t get a conviction.
So, let’s review. The Georgia case was one of the four cases that together, accounted for Trump’s 91 indictments.
- The case in New York, in which Trump was accused of the falsification of business records to hide his payments to Stormy Daniels, and which led to his conviction on 34 counts.
- The case in Florida, in which Trump was accused of mishandling classified documents, which Judge Aileen Canon slow-walked to death.
- The case in Washington D.C. stemming directly from the January 6th insurrection, which eventually also ran out of time, despite Jack Smith’s best efforts.
- This Georgia case, brought by D.A. Fani Willis, revolving around Trump’s phone call and the conspiracy to overturn votes in Georgia.
The Georgia case had one big advantage, which is that it was brought under state law, so that Trump would not be able to pardon himself.
From the start, Fani Willis made several mistakes. First, she made the case too large. It eventually involved a conspiracy between 18 named defendants, plus Trump, which made it a behemoth to prosecute. Second, she began a romantic relationship with her lead prosecutor, Nathan Wade.
Oh boy.
Wade had been hired in November of 2021 as a “special” prosecutor to help oversee this large and complicated case. This romantic relationship was a nothingburger, it made no difference to the prosecution of Trump. It was less of an ethical conflict than Trump engages in every single day. And yet, it derailed the case.
First, it should be acknowledged that it’s generally a bad idea for anyone at the top of a chain of command to get romantically involved with a subordinate.
In short, Fani Willis should have known better.
But there was no actual ethical or financial conflict.
Some of the attorneys for defendants other than Trump alleged (without proving) that the arrangement was akin to a “quasi-kickback scheme” because Wade (who was being paid by Willis’s office for his work on the case) used some of those earnings to fund shared vacations with Willis.
This is absurd. It presupposes that Wade chose to prosecute people because he wanted more money from Willis’ office, whereas the reality was that Willis had had trouble finding someone willing to undertake this massive and complicated prosecution in a very politically charged environment. All indications are that she became involved with Willis sometime after he came on board.
Nevertheless, on March 15, 2024, trial judge Scott F. McAfee ruled that Willis’s relationship with Wade created a “significant appearance of impropriety,” which caused Wade to resign from the case.
Not good enough for the Georgia Court of Appeals, which ruled 2–1 in December that Willis (and her entire office) still had to be disqualified due to the “appearance of impropriety” arising from her relationship with Wade.
Willis appealed, but later the Supreme Court of Georgia declined to take up the case, thereby making the disqualification final. That triggered the transfer of the case to a new prosecutor, in this case Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia.
He, in turn, decided this week that “there is no realistic prospect that a sitting President will be compelled to appear in Georgia to stand trial,” so it would be “futile and unproductive” to push forward with the case.
He’s not wrong about that.
Also, complicating the case now is the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States, which would have required the courts to litigate which of the president’s many bad behaviors counts as “official acts” and is therefore immune from prosecution.
Commentators noted that Skandalakis’s decision to drop the charges was “not surprising” since his agency does not have the resources to prosecute such a complex case with numerous co-defendants.
Fani Willis, in the meantime, was re-elected District Attorney of Fulton County in November of 2024 with 68.1% of the vote, contradicting the notion that her voters were upset with her for her indiscretion with Nathan Wade.
Far from being the victim of a “witch hunt,” Trump has proven, again and again, to basically be the luckiest son-of-a-bitch alive with respect to legal matters. By now it’s clear that he’s never going to see the inside of a jail cell, and frankly it would be impractical (if not just impossible) to imprison a former President with his secret service protection. But the same is not true for most of Trump’s subordinates and associates.
Trump will die a very rich man, and maybe the greatest grifter of all time.
From now on, it can never again be said that “no one is above the law.” Clearly Trump is above the law. He is the cherry on top of a massively distorted legal system in which the powerless are punished and the powerful mostly get away scot free. It will be interesting to see if the legal system ever catches up with the flagrantly corrupt Elon Musk. I’m not betting on that.
