FANI WILLIS TO FACE CORRUPTION CHARGES
FANI WILLIS CHARGED WITH VIOLATING OPEN RECORDS LAW
BY THE LEGAL EAGLE
Here’s a timeline highlighting the key events where Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has faced legal challenges and setbacks:
Timeline of Legal Challenges Faced by Fani Willis:
August 2023: Fani Willis indicted Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants on felony election subversion and racketeering charges.
August 2023: The Georgia State Senate issued subpoenas to Fani Willis seeking her testimony and documents related to her prosecution of Trump.
December 3, 2024: A Fulton County judge heard arguments regarding Willis’s refusal to comply with the Georgia State Senate subpoenas
December 3, 2024: Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit against Fani Willis for failing to comply with an open records request.
December 3, 2024: Superior Court of Fulton County Judge Robert C.I. McBurney ruled that Willis was in default for not complying with court deadlines in the Judicial Watch lawsuithttps://www.newsweek.com/fani-willis-pay-judicial-watch-judge-ruling-1995048.
December 19, 2024: A Georgia appeals court disqualified Fani Willis from her election interference prosecution of Donald Trump, but allowed the indictment to stand.
December 20, 2024: A hearing is scheduled to determine whether Fani Willis has to pay Judicial Watch their attorney’s fees.
These events illustrate the ongoing legal battles and challenges Fani Willis is facing, particularly in relation to her high-profile cases and compliance with legal procedures.
When a public figure becomes a well-known icon in their community, it’s hard for the public to reconcile that person’s public image with serious allegations, especially when it involves financial or sexual misconduct. The community, may generally feel that to accept the accusations is a form of betraying someone they’ve always considered one of their own.
Behaving immorally is not criminal behavior. Just because “an act or behavior” is immoral doesn’t mean it’s illegal or punishable by law. This odd circumstance might explain how and why Fani Willis, the District Attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, who has gone against the community’s conservative values (especially the fundamental tenets of Christian/Baptist church doctrine — such as adultery) was still re-elected for another term.
Fani Willis leads the office where she works as if it were her personal property, wielding power over the county and its employees rather than simply running it as a local government office. She complicated things when she met (and later got involved with) Nathan Wade, a married man, at a “municipal judges training conference” in 2019.
Fast forward to September 2023, Ashleigh Merchant who is acquainted with Nathan Wade’s attorney, Terrence Bradley, happened to run into him at a Georgia courthouse. During their conversation, Bradley revealed how Willis and Wade met. This prompted Merchant to use court-approved text messages to ask him when they met. She used those texts to expose the affair, pushing the couple to deny their relationship publicly.
Willis responded by attending local fundamentalist churches, portraying herself as a victim of both racism and scandal, while presenting herself as a devout, Christian and oppressed woman of God (her words). She even held her hand upwards towards the heavens while she was “Speaking to the Lord,” claiming to be a child of God declaring that God had chosen her to persecute the former president of the United States.
The theatrics (televised at her request) created an awkward setting where she appeared to be a victim of racism and misogyny, not someone who had an affair with a married man whose wife was battling cancer. Her involvement in the Wade couple’s publicly filed divorce documents even allege Willis advised Nathan Wade on how to avoid contributing to his wife’s medically required cancer treatments.
This issue of morality vs. legality is nothing new. It was often a point of contention during Hollywood’s Golden Age when major studios like Universal, Paramount, and MGM controlled not just the stars’ careers, but their personal lives as well. Back then, stars had little to no privacy, with studios dictating everything from their relationships to their public appearances.
Fast forward to today’s digital age, Fani Willis has been using taxpayer funds to track her media coverage across TV, radio, social media, and more, to control her image to ensure it benefits her political career.
It was different during the 1960s when Bill Cosby broke barriers by starring in I Spy, becoming the first Black actor in a major TV role and the only comedian to receive 26+ degrees from varying universities. His success led to further cultural impact, including the creation of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. Cosby became a household name, celebrated for his wholesome public image, but behind the scenes, his lifestyle was anything but that. While playing a respectable family man on TV, he led a reckless life off-screen, including attending parties at the Playboy Mansion where allegations of sexual assault were rampant.
Cosby’s image was also carefully crafted by NBC, who went as far as actually helping him obtain a doctorate in education, despite his thesis being of poor quality. At the time, NBC saw it as a marketing opportunity, and the university saw the value of the financial donation Cosby made (in the millions).
In the same way that Cosby’s public image was controlled, so was his darker side kept hidden, not just by him, but by powerful institutions that chose to ignore or even facilitate his wrongdoing. There are millions of Americans who grew up watching Cosby’s programming from 3PM until their parents arrived home from work who still have difficulty accepting the path Cosby’s life has taken.
South Carolina University gave Cosby a Doctorate in Laws
Despite the rumors swirling in Hollywood circles, Cosby’s public persona remained largely untarnished for decades. The studios and networks that profited from his image, including NBC, were deeply invested in his success and often turned a blind eye to the darker aspects of his personal life. By the time Cosby was finally convicted of sexual assault in the 2010s, NBC had defended him for decades, only to eventually shift their support to their next controversial figure who happened to be R. Kelly.
Cosby’s fall from grace was a painful experience for many, especially within the Black community, where he was seen as a symbol of pride and accomplishment. To the Black community, he was akin to a spiritual leader (often referred to as the Black Pope). He was a figure who had transcended the limitations placed on Black entertainers by an industry that had historically marginalized them.
For some, hearing about Cosby’s crimes felt like a betrayal, leading to intense emotional reactions and even violence when his name was disrespected. For a generation of American and Canadian children, Cosby had been a trusted figure in their lives, offering wholesome entertainment — his downfall was difficult to accept.
The attachment to public figures like Cosby is not unique to the entertainment industry. It mirrors the emotional investment that many have in political figures like Fani Willis, the prosecutor behind high-profile cases, i.e., the prosecution of YSL and Donald Trump’s election interference case.
Just as fans defended Cosby for years, many people resist turning against Fani Willis who they have become familiar with via television even in the face of overwhelming negative evidence. In both cases, loyalty to a public figure often clouds objective reasoning, leading to heated debates and divided communities.
In both Hollywood’s past and in today’s political landscape, the challenge remains the same: how to reconcile the emotional connection to an icon with the often painful truth about their real lives that may include crimes from minor actions such as jay walking to murder.
As communications speed up in the modern era, the power of the media to shape and protect public personas may have diminished, but the emotional attachments and loyalties that form around such figures remain as strong as ever.
Of all of Fani Willis’s crimes, the worst of them was to exploit the backlog of untouched cases of Fulton County’s incarcerated men which she used to bolster her own political image. There were plenty of incarcerated Blacks in Fulton County, man picked up for loitering and trespassing.
In an attempt to make it convenient for the Fulton County police and prosecutors. Those already incarcerated were left there without being brought before a judge (some were there up to 5 years) and hundreds more were added. Having a jail full of unjustly incarcerated Black men to choose from, most would admit to anything in an effort to get out whether they had committed a crime or not.
No where in the United States, since the end of slavery, had there been such a wrongful and illegal mass incarceration of so many thousands of Black men. It happened in Fulton, County, Georgia.
For this blatant lie, Fulton County, Georgia taxpayers will now pay the $20,000+ fine.
