Though she initially set out to secure a conviction and send him to prison, Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis has instead handed former President Donald Trump win after win due to revelations of her own alleged corruption that may force her disqualification from his election interference case, as Fox News reports.
Already plagued by allegations of an improper romantic relationship with a special prosecutor she hired to work the case, Willis is now dogged by the news that another of the lawyers she hired to help convict Trump had donated significant sums to her election campaign.
A recent review of campaign finance records has revealed that John Floyd, a well-known Atlanta lawyer with specialized knowledge of racketeering law hired by Willis to assist in the Trump case, made a contribution of $4,300 to the D.A.'s run for the office she now holds.
Floyd's donations reportedly came in two installments, one for $2,800 on March 20, 2020, and another in the amount of $1,500 on June 25 of that same year.
While perhaps not technically a legal or ethical problem for Willis, the appointment of Floyd to the Trump prosecution team does present problematic optics for the beleaguered district attorney, according to John Shu, an expert in constitutional law who served in both Bush administrations.
“Floyd is a well-known and well-respected litigator and RICO expert, and others from his law firm also donated to Willis' campaign. Besides, there's no way that any of them could have known in the spring of and summer of 2020 that a Trump RICO case would even exist," Shu declared.
Even so, he added, “Willis created huge optics and conflict-of-interest problems for herself when she hired Nathan Wade, with whom she admitted to having a romantic relationship, regardless of when the relationship started,” particularly because Wade has no RICO experience, and he has received a greater hourly rate than was paid to Floyd.
In a statement given to Fox News Digital, Floyd offered a defense of his donations to Willis' campaign, saying that they “were made long before the election and could not have been related to events that had not occurred and could not have been anticipated at that time.”
Floyd stated, “I contributed to Ms. Willis' campaign because I knew from personal experience, including a seven-month trial as her co-counsel in 2014-15, that she would make a good district attorney.”
“The voters reached the same conclusion, voting out a four-term incumbent,” he added.
Despite the glee regularly expressed by the folks at MSNBC over Trump's Georgia indictment and Willis' aggressive pursuit of a conviction, even network columnist Jessica Levinson has been forced to admit that the D.A.'s conduct has been a real boon to the former president's claims about the case and the manner in which it has unfolded.
In Levinson's estimation, “[N]ow that she's been accused of a conflict of interest, Willis herself may not be the biggest threat to the case against Trump.
Regardless of how one interpreted Willis' appearance on the witness stand earlier this month in which she attempted to refute allegations of impropriety, Levinson observed, “the fact that there was even a hearing into Willis and whether she has a financial conflict of interest in the case was a windfall for Trump.”
Though the final decision on disqualification has yet to be made, as Levinson notes, and Willis may still survive the challenge from Trump and his co-defendants, “the damage done to the public's perception of the case is incontrovertible,” and that is something in which the former president is assuredly taking a good degree of satisfaction.
