Fani Willis’s and Nathan Wade’s testimony cries out for an investigation

Fani Willis’s and Nathan Wade’s testimony, to date, indicates that they allegedly engaged in the lowest form of money laundering, something that seems to have blindsided the state’s attorney general. On the facts, though, it’s clear that both need to be investigated and, perhaps, given the boot.

To frame the import of their testimony, consider that, occasionally, a pitcher will be called up from the minors in Major League Baseball. He’ll then strike out top hitters by throwing “fastballs” that peak at 70 mph. These are high-school speed pitches, but they somehow baffle big-league hitters. Why is this? Because the pitches are unexpectedly low-tech.

Thanks to scientific techniques, hitters are used to seeing pitches bearing down at them faster than 95 mph with sharp movement. When they see this slow, floating white object languidly approaching them, it confuses them, throwing off their timing and causing them to miss the ball entirely.

Viewing Fani Willis’s seeming money laundering as low-tech may explain why Georgia’s Republican Attorney General of Georgia has not already announced an investigation into her activities. In a hi-tech world, where people engage in sophisticated machinations to avoid detection, a scheme so basic and lacking in complexity confuses members of law enforcement.

Image: Fani Willis (edited). YouTube screen grab.

How low-tech was Fani’s activity? Just consider the known facts.

In politics, we often hear the phrase, “That explanation doesn’t pass the laugh test.” In Fani’s case, though, it literally failed that test as one of Trump’s co-defendants, David Shafer, laughed out loud after hearing Nathan Wade explain that Fani Willis paid cash to reimburse him for the trips and other outlays he spent on her. I’m almost surprised Ashleigh Merchant, who questioned Wade, didn’t say, “I’m sorry. I was all the way over here. I couldn’t hear you. Did you say she paid you back in cash, that’s it?”

In what universe did the chief law enforcement officer in a county of more than one million people think her explanation would fly? “Yes, I reimbursed my lover, to whom I paid hundreds of thousands in taxpayer funds, with cash. No, I don’t have a record of withdrawing the cash from a bank. No, my lover didn’t give me a receipt to show that I reimbursed him. And, no, there’s no record of my lover depositing the cash into a bank.”

Oh, OK. I guess we have to take you at your word for it, then.

Imagine for a moment that Fani Willis’ concept of ethics was to be the norm for government officials… A lobbyist for a defense contractor could drop off a new Porsche at the home of a congressman on the Defense Appropriation Committee right before that congressman voted to grant a large contract to the company the lobbyist represents. The congressman could do this despite explicit prohibitions on these gifts. Then, of course, he’d fail to report it.

Under the “Fani Willis rule,” if he were to be called out, he would just say it wasn’t a gift because he repaid the lobbyist with cash. And no, he has no record of doing so, but you should trust his word. The entire idea of an ethical framework would be rendered moot by such an interpretation.

The irony is that Donald Trump is being prosecuted in Georgia because, supposedly, he knew he lost the election but still attempted to contest the results. Now, though, we’ve learned that both Willis and Wade believe that their own personal beliefs supersede the actual law.

Wade, for example, explained that the reason he wasn’t forthcoming on his interrogatories in his divorce proceedings was because he personally believed that his marriage was irrevocably broken because his wife cheated on him in 2015, even though he was still legally married to her as of this date. At the same time, Fani admitted that she didn’t have to comply with the rules surrounding reporting gifts because, in her own mind, those weren’t really gifts. Apparently, Atlanta prosecutors get to apply their own individual standards vis-a-vis the law, but Donald Trump is not afforded that same leeway.

To date, the Georgia Republican party leadership has largely refused to intervene in this corrupt prosecution. The time for them to wake up has arrived. It’s time to square up and smack that slow floating white ball into the seats like the late great Atlanta icon Hank Aaron would have done. Such an apparently colossal breach of both ethics and the law can neither be ignored nor allowed to stand.