Fani Willis Rolls On

Today, Judge Scott McAfee ruled that Fani Willis could stay on the case against Trump in Georgia, provided Nathan Wade leaves the prosecution team. It’s a judgement that proves the adage about Solomon splitting the baby is routinely misapplied. In Solomon’s case, he made a shockingly clean but injudicious decision to avoid a revoltingly messy outcome. Here, Judge McAfee made an unnecessarily messy decision because he was trying to look judicious - but whatever. No one really thought this guy was Solomon anyway, and in the end, Fani Willis gets to stay on the hunt.

Good.

Personally, were I the judge, I would have tossed aside the charges against Willis months ago and told the adversaries to stay focused on their roles in the case against Trump and his associates. I’d have made the judgement that - as a white guy in Georgia - there was zero chance that ANY good would come out of publicly examining the private, sexual, and financial lives of prominent Black professionals in an already highly polarized and racialized historical and legal milieu. Even admitting that I shared a hint of suspicion that, for some reason, an attorney and political leader as accomplished as Fani Willis would stoop to using a combination of sexual persuasion and political clout to extort and manipulate a colleague - who is also a man of substance, means, and power - for paid vacations is just offensive on its surface. It plays WAY too hard into the Jezebel / Wild Buck stereotypes of Black sexuality, and even considering it - I’d have surmised from the offing - would only turn my courtroom into a pathetic sideshow of shadow-play racism for weeks on end. But I’m not Judge McAfee - so here we are, two months after this unnecessary stupidity began, with the trial again moving forward.

Ugh, what a silly distraction.