It seems as if only a few months ago, nobody in the country outside of Fulton County, Georgia had ever heard of county District Attorney Fani Willis. Now you can barely turn on a cable news network without seeing her face unless there’s a category 4 hurricane slamming into Florida or an Island in Hawaii is burning down. That’s because, after running an election campaign based on a promise to “get Trump,” the Soros-backed DA proceeded to try to do exactly that, recently assembling a string of highly dubious charges to indict the former President, alleging some grand RICO-style conspiracy. Many Republicans have been criticizing her, with some in her own state looking for ways to have her removed from office. But as the AP notes today, one name missing from that list is Georgia’s Republican Governor, Brian Kemp. He’s been keeping his powder dry and trying to stay out of the fight.
Some Republicans in Washington and Georgia began attacking Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis immediately after she announced the Aug. 14 indictment of former President Donald Trump for conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. But others, including Gov. Brian Kemp, have been conspicuous in their unwillingness to pile on.
Kemp, who had previously survived scathing attacks from Trump over his refusal to endorse the former president’s false claims about the election, declined to comment on the indictment of Trump and 18 others at a conservative political conference hosted by radio host and Kemp ally Erick Erickson.
Noting that he had been called before a special grand jury to testify during the investigation, Kemp stated forcefully that Democratic President Joe Biden was the rightful winner of Georgia’s 16 electoral votes and said swinging the spotlight to Trump’s legal troubles would be a mistake.
I’m not sure what’s keeping Kemp on the sidelines in all of this because I don’t really see a downside to Kemp raising the same objections so many others have. To be sure, he’s saying all of the right words, claiming that the Democrats want the GOP to focus on Trump so we’re not talking about Joe Biden’s obvious failures and increasingly certain corruption. And that’s a fair enough point. I agree that the Democrats would very much prefer to attack Trump than defend Biden.
But as so many have noted, the indictments handed down by Fani Willis are just insane. As with most of the other indictments, Willis is bringing highly “novel” charges based on actions that have been taken by multiple other presidential and gubernatorial candidates dating back for more than twenty years. (Hannity played a long montage of them Monday night. The link goes to the Fox News YouTube channel.) Further, even if there was any significant merit to the accusations, such charges should have been brought in federal court. If this proceeds, you’ll have county prosecutors bringing the entire GOP field into court all over the country from now until next November.
It’s also worth noting that Willis should have recused herself from this case on day one. As I noted above, she ran on a campaign promise to “get Trump” just as Alvin Bragg and Letitia James did in New York. And that’s all they’ve focused on. They clearly can’t be unbiased in such a case. In fact, last year, when Willis was digging around into matters involving potential replacement electors in Georgia in 2020, a judge effectively barred her from investigating because of her openly partisan political activities in support of Democrats. The same standard should be applied here.
But we all know how this is going to play out. Just as the AP is already doing along with the usual cable news suspects, Fani Willis will be held up on the media’s shoulders as a hero. She will be celebrated for being “brave” enough to fight the Bad Orange Man and save us all from the certain doom that awaits us if Trump isn’t stopped from returning to office. And in the end, that’s all this has been about from the beginning. It has nothing to do with the blind application of justice or any perceived crimes that may or may not have taken place. This is just about “stopping Trump.” It’s what Willis ran on when seeking office and now she’s going to try to deliver by hook or by crook. (Pun intended since most of them are crooks.) And if the defense can’t get this case moved to federal court, if not dismissed entirely, they might just get away with it.
