Closing arguments were held today in the Fulton County case to disqualify District Attorney Fannie Willis. Fanny is under fire after she was caught lying to the court about her relationship with her lover and Trump's prosecutor, Nathan Wade, and committing perjury during her testimony. The evidence is clear in this case. Fanny and her lover, Nathan Wade, had been seeing each other romantically for months and perhaps years before she hired him to prosecute the former President of the United States on RICO charges.
Lawyers for the defendants in the case, including Trump, and from the attorney general's office, made closing arguments on the matter to Judge Scott McAfee, who said he would rule within two weeks.
Attorney Harold McDougald hit up the MAGA cleanup today at the hearing and mopped the floor with Fanny Willis. McDougald is represented by Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources Jeffrey Clark in this case. Clark is one of 19 defendants indicted on RICO charges by Fannie, Nathan, and their secret contacts in the Biden White House.
McDougald made the day's clinic in his closing argument.
Here is the text.
Harry McDougald: The general rule on conflicts of interest for lawyers is found in Rule of Professional Conduct 1.7. We all know that all of this has been drilled into us, that we cannot have a conflict of interest, and if we do, we must withdraw or we will be disqualified. The basic idea is that conflicts of interest impair a lawyer's independent professional judgment. This is the test of conflict and whether it can be waived and whether it results in disqualification. This struggle is not only financial.
It could be any conflict that impairs your independent professional judgment. It holds that in McLaughlin v. Payne, the court asked what constitutes a personal interest for purposes of disqualification. It's anything that impairs professional judgment that's reflected in the ABA standards that Mr. Merchant quoted, which lists the personal, political, financial, professional, business, real estate, or other interests or relationships of a prosecutor, and that's really included in the prosecutor's oath to act with integrity .
Judge McBurney's previous disqualification order was based on political, not financial, interests. What my colleagues have described as forensic misconduct could also be considered a conflict of interest. And based on that footnote in the Williams case, the root of all the problems we see in this court now is a conflict of interest arising from their individual personal interests in perpetuating and concealing their relationship. This is the original sin from which all other problems stem. There are six different actual conflicts of interest in this case, any one of which would warrant disqualification, but collectively, they are practically compelling.
Firstly, Financial struggle that has already been covered.
second, Personal ambition, political ambition.
third, There is an intertwined or complementary pattern of deception and concealment of the relationship and money.
the fourth, Discourse in church.
Fifth, Request for a protective order filed by the prosecutor in Mr. Wade's divorce case.
VI, In the way the State went about defending the disqualification motion, particularly the hearing on the financial portion, the court asked for a limiting principle and asked about materiality. A limiting principle is anything that impedes a lawyer's independent professional judgment and is routinely applied. We have a county code section that strictly prohibits gifts from contractors. By analogy, we have a federal bribery statute, which has a maximum cap of $5,000.18.
Six, six, six. The court asked about the burdens and inferences. The court could draw an adverse inference from the State's failure to present evidence supporting the invisible magic cash balance theory based on State v. Thomas, 311 Georgia 407 and especially footnote 19 On the question of timing that the court asked about, there were two contracts as to Mr. Wade, executed after they admitted the commencement of the relationship, and each of them is injured or conflicted under county law and common law.
The second conflict is her political ambition, which was previously punished by the ruling. Bernie. This is also present in this book. The inside of this book says that they were given, quote, exclusive access to thousands of confidential documents, emails, text messages, and audio recordings. The court twice denied defense requests to disclose special-purpose grand jury materials.
She helped herself to the glory of this book. I have provided certified copies of a number of county code sections. I won't go into these matters, but I will tell you why they are important. The body of laws from the state constitution to county ordinances imposes a system on the DA under which she has three obligations. She would have to go to the county commission to get approval to pay him as she did.
She cannot accept gifts from a prohibited source. She must reveal the gifts she received. I evaded all those requirements. Section 269 of the provincial law prohibits gifts from prohibited sources, which is what it was. There is no boyfriend exception.
Disclosure forms. The evidence is sufficient for you to find that its disclosure form for the year 2022 is forged and that it is a forged book. This is an actual conflict of interest between her duty, her legal duty to disclose, her legal duty of candor as a prosecutor, and her private and personal interests in hiding the relationship, hiding the gifts, and keeping the gravy train running for as long as possible. . His role in the pattern of concealment is the story you see in many divorce cases. The husband hides things from his wife, such as how much money he makes for the other woman and what he spends on the other woman.
He stood on that stand, and lied about his interrogations, and he stood on that stand, and lied about his lying in his interrogations. And the attorney general's lawyers, the district attorney's office, sat there and let him do it. They did nothing to correct the obvious perjury in itself that justified the disqualification of each one of them. The reason they lied and covered it up was to avoid the problem they now face, which serves their personal interests at the expense of their public duties as prosecutors. In the speech at the church, I want to focus on why she did it.
Mr. Gillan talked about that. She did this to distract attention from her misconduct and Mr. Wade's misconduct. She violated her public duty as a prosecutor to advance her own interests and the personal interests of her friend.
This is an unqualified conflict between her personal interests and the actual, practical and embodied public duty, which is based on indisputable facts. The next thing I did that was a disqualifying conflict of interest was my emergency application for a protective order that I filed in the divorce. She has filed a certified copy of the same in Exhibit 37. She has sought a protective order under the fundamental principle on the basis that she is the prosecutor. The entire registration is expressly based on her status as a paralegal.
In fact, she never lets you forget it. She said that 27 times in twelve pages in this file. Speaking in her capacity as prosecutor, she said that the circumstances, I quote, indicate that defendant Jocelyn Wade is using due process to harass and embarrass District Attorney Willis and, in doing so, is obstructing and interfering with an ongoing criminal investigation. In her prayer of relief on page eleven, she asked for six months, as she put it, to complete the review of the files in this case, and to investigate and depose the relevant witnesses regarding interference and obstruction. This movement confirms that there is no sugar coating.
This is a clear violation of Rule of Professional Conduct 3.4h, which prohibits attorneys from making threats of criminal prosecution to gain an advantage in a civil case. She abused her power. She abused her position to threaten her boyfriend's wife with criminal prosecution for gain for herself and her boyfriend in her boyfriend's divorce. She violated her public duties by not making this type of threat in order to serve her own personal interests and those of Mr. Wade.
Another practical conflict, the last category is the defense behavior in this session. There are many objections raised based on attorney-client privilege during Mr. Bradley's testimony. Most of these objections were made by the state, but the privilege asserted did not belong to the state. It belongs to Mr. Wade. This shows that the DA's office serves the DA's personal interests Mr. Wade continues to hide and cover up their relationship and not the cause of justice they are sworn to serve. This is a conflict of interest. It is a continuation of the wrong pattern of concealment and concealment that they have practiced from the beginning.
But now they have recruited the entire office into the organization. In the written response to the motion to dismiss, they said that, and I quote, to be perfectly clear, there is no evidence that Attorney General Willis obtained any financial benefit from Mr. Wade. This is on page 15. Completely false.
Ten attorneys in this case put their names to it, starting with the prosecutor. So throw another log on the fire of conflict of interest.
The problem here is that the prosecutor cannot distinguish between her personal interests and ambitions on the one hand, and her public duties as a prosecutor on the other hand. And apparently, neither can anyone else in their office. Of the six conflicts I have identified, only one is subject to conflicting evidence. This is a case study of what happens when you work with a conflict of interest. He has placed an irreparable stain on the issue.
Think about the message that would be sent if they weren't excluded! If this is tolerated, we will get more of it.
This office is a global laughingstock because of their behavior. They should be excluded and the case dismissed.
This comes from Tracy Baines.
