Fani Willis was 'terrified' because her case against Trump was 'weak,' attorney says
Georgia attorney Ashleigh Merchant reacted to news that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had been disqualified from her "weak" election interference case against President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday.
A Georgia court of appeals filing declared that the "appearance of impropriety" stemming from an affair Willis had with Nathan Wade prior to hiring him to prosecute the case required her disqualification from the case.
Merchant, who exposed the improper affair months ago, told "Fox & Friends" on Friday that she believed Willis stuck to the case despite the scandal because she didn’t want anyone else to know how "weak" the case was.
"She could have done the right thing early on, whenever we brought this to everyone’s attention, and said, ‘Hey, let’s have a neutral prosecutor handle this case. Let’s have someone else look at it.’ But I think she was terrified because her case was so weak, she didn’t want someone else to look at it," Merchant told Fox News Channel’s Steve Doocy.
Based on Merchant’s uncovering of Willis’ relationship with Wade, Judge Scott McAfee ruled in March that Willis must either withdraw herself and her team from the 2020 election interference case or remove Wade as special prosecutor. Following the decision, Wade resigned from his position in the case, leaving Willis to continue it.
At the time, Merchant expressed her desire to have seen Willis removed from the case entirely, writing in a statement, "While we believe the court should have disqualified Willis’ office entirely, this opinion is a vindication that everything put forth by the defense was true, accurate and relevant to the issues surrounding our client's right to a fair trial."
Merchant’s goal to see Willis ousted happened months later on Thursday, after the state appeals court declared that Willis’ "appearance of impropriety" constitutes "the rare case in which disqualification is mandated, and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings."
Merchant characterized it as an obvious decision, telling Doocy that Willis’ impropriety was "something that you couldn’t turn your eye away from, and I think that’s something the court of appeals said."
"It’s one of those things that you know it when you see it," Merchant continued. "It’s the appearance of impropriety. It is so great that it had to be enough to kick them off the case."
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After speculating that Willis wouldn’t willingly leave the case because of its weakness, Merchant expressed her belief that if a more "neutral prosecutor" got hold of the case, they would have it dismissed.
"I’ve always thought, if a neutral prosecutor – someone who didn’t have a financial interest in this case and a political interest in this case – looked at it, that they would see things differently. And they would decide that the taxpayers, the courts, the people who are charging the case, they deserve this case to be dismissed."