Former US assistant attorney urges Willis to recuse herself
A former justice department prosecutor has called on the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, to recuse herself from the racketeering case against Donald Trump and his allies.
Andrew Weissmann, a former assistant US attorney, speaking to MSNBC after Judge Scott McAfee’s decision, said:
The key is how to go forward, because clearly Wade is off, but I think that this is such a huge body blow, almost a fatal blow to Fani Willis.
I think the way forward is she has to voluntarily recuse herself. I don’t know that she has it in her, but I think she has to say I’m going to appoint a chief assistant who is going to oversee this case. She clearly has no credibility with this judge.
Key events
Summary of the day so far
The Georgia judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state has ruled that the district attorney Fani Willis can continue to head the prosecution, as long as a special prosecutor in the case and her top deputy, Nathan Wade, steps down. The decision avoids catastrophe for Willis, but it still significantly harms her credibility and underscores questions about her judgment.
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Here are the top takeaways from the 23-page ruling by the judge, Scott McAfee.
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You can also read the judge’s full decision here.
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Trump lawyer Steve Sadow said his team will “use all legal options available” to continue to fight the Georgia election case.
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A former assistant US attorney, Andrew Weissmann, called on Willis to voluntarily recuse herself from the case against Trump and his allies.
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Republican senator Lindsey Graham called the judge’s decision “nonsensical” and “bizarre”.
Also:
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The White House’s top lawyer told House Republicans to give up on their impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden in a letter addressed to the House speaker, Mike Johnson. A spokesperson for Johnson said it was not up to the White House to decide what happened with the inquiry.
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Joe Biden defended the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, over comments he made on Thursday calling on Israel to hold new elections and harshly criticizing its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
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The supreme court will hear oral arguments on Monday in a case with the potential to radically redefine how the US government interacts with social media companies.
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Biden welcomed the Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, at the White House. Varadkar told Biden that his priority was to get a ceasefire in Gaza as soon as possible to allow humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory.
A spokesperson for House speaker Mike Johnson has responded to a letter sent by the White House’s top lawyer urging House Republicans to give up on their impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.
In a scathing letter on Friday, White House counsel Ed Siskel told Johnson “it is clear the House Republican impeachment is over” and noting that despite collecting over 100,000 pages of records and conducting interviews with dozens of witnesses, including multiple public hearings, “none of the evidence has demonstrated that the president did anything wrong.”
Raj Shah, a spokesperson for Johnson, accused Biden of lying and said it was not up to the White House to decide what happened with the inquiry. An email shared by Reuters reads:
The White House does not get to decide how impeachment gets resolved, that is for Congress to decide.
Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, signed a law earlier this week that would make it possible to sanction and remove elected prosecutors, which could potentially disrupt Fani Willis’ prosecution against Donald Trump.
Kemp signed legislation last May setting up a statewide Prosecuting Attorneys Statewide Qualifications Commission, a move that was seen as a thinly veiled power grab to push out Democratic prosecutors. In November, the state supreme court refused to approve the rules governing the panel’s conduct, saying there were “grave doubts” it could regulate the duties of district attorneys beyond the practice of law.
Georgia state legislators passed a bill in January removing the requirement for supreme court approval.
Kemp, speaking before signing the bill on Wednesday, said:
This legislation will help us ensure rogue and incompetent prosecutors are held accountable if they refuse to uphold the law.
The measure is likely to face renewed legal challenges.
The Republican senator Lindsey Graham has issued a statement calling the judge’s ruling on Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis “nonsensical” and “bizarre”, adding that it was a “sad day for Georgia”.
The statement from Graham, a key ally of Donald Trump, continues:
When it comes to the prosecution of President Trump and others in Fulton County, Georgia, politics hangs heavy in the air.
The charges brought by Fulton County DA Willis and the bizarre decision by the judge not to remove her for an obvious appearance of impropriety reinforces the narrative that there is a two-tiered system of justice for President Trump and those around him.
Graham added that he was “hopeful” that either the Georgia state senate or the state’s attorney general will “look into this matter”.
Judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing the Georgia election interference case against Donald Trump and his co-defendants, earlier this week dismissed some of the charges in the wide-ranging indictment.
The judge dismissed six of the charges in the indictment, including three against Trump, but left in place other counts – including 10 facing the former president.
One of the 41 charges Trump and some of the co-defendants in the case were charged with was soliciting officials in Georgia to violate their oath of office. The six defendants who had the charge at issue in the case were Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Ray Smith and Robert Cheeley. Those charges were dismissed.
The ruling on Wednesday dealt a blow for Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis, and marked the first time charges in any of Trump’s four criminal cases have been dismissed.
Former US assistant attorney urges Willis to recuse herself
A former justice department prosecutor has called on the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, to recuse herself from the racketeering case against Donald Trump and his allies.
Andrew Weissmann, a former assistant US attorney, speaking to MSNBC after Judge Scott McAfee’s decision, said:
The key is how to go forward, because clearly Wade is off, but I think that this is such a huge body blow, almost a fatal blow to Fani Willis.
I think the way forward is she has to voluntarily recuse herself. I don’t know that she has it in her, but I think she has to say I’m going to appoint a chief assistant who is going to oversee this case. She clearly has no credibility with this judge.
Read judge’s disqualification ruling on Fani Willis in Trump Georgia case
A Fulton county judge has ruled that district attorney Fani Willis can continue to head the prosecution of Donald Trump for trying to undermine the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, as long as special prosecutor Nathan Wade steps down.
You can read Judge Scott McAfee’s decision below:
Schumer ‘made a good speech’ about Israel concerns ‘shared by many Americans’, says Biden
Joe Biden has defended Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer over comments he made on Thursday calling on Israel to hold new elections and harshly criticizing its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
“He made a good speech,” Biden said when asked by reporters about Schumer’s remarks on the Senate floor on Thursday. He added:
He expressed serious concerns, shared not only by him but by many Americans.
Biden added that his staff were notified about the speech in advance by Schumer, who is the highest-ranking Jewish official in the US.
Nick Robins-Early
The supreme court will hear oral arguments on Monday in Murthy v Missouri, a case with the potential to radically redefine how the US government interacts with social media companies.
The suit is the culmination of years of a Republican-backed legal campaign arguing that efforts by federal agencies and Joe Biden’s White House to reduce misinformation online constitute censorship.
Central to the case is whether the White House violated free speech protections during the Covid-19 pandemic, when government officials requested that Twitter, Facebook and other social networks remove misinformation about the coronavirus. The lawsuit accuses the government of “coercing” tech platforms to change their policies, block content and suspend users.
The complaint was filed by attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri as well as rightwing individuals such as conspiracy site founder Jim Hoft. If the courts decide in their favor, the White House would be blocked from contacting social media companies, as happened when a lower court sided with the plaintiffs.
The Biden administration has argued that officials did not coerce or threaten social media platforms. It also argues that federal agencies have routinely communicated with social media platforms about terrorist group organizing or foreign influence campaigns, which has prompted tech companies to voluntarily enforce their own policies that ban such content.
Here’s an explainer to the Murthy v Missouri case.
Joe Biden has welcomed the Irish taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, at the White House ahead of St Patrick’s Day, with the two men expected to discuss the restoration of devolution as well as the situation in the Middle East.
Biden, who often speaks of his Irish heritage, is also expected to speak at the Friends of Ireland luncheon at the Capitol hosted by House speaker Mike Johnson at noon.
Martin Pengelly
Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, introduced a bill to establish a four-day US working week.
Studies and pilot programmes have shown that four-day workweeks can increase productivity and happiness. Given Republican control of the House and a Senate split 51-49 in favour of Democrats, however, the legislation stands little chance of success.
“Moving to a 32-hour workweek with no loss of pay is not a radical idea,” Sanders said on Thursday.
Today, American workers are over 400% more productive than they were in the 1940s. And yet millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages than they were decades ago … It is time to reduce the stress level in our country and allow Americans to enjoy a better quality of life. It is time for a 32-hour workweek with no loss in pay.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) argues for a 32-hour workweek, citing that Americans now work more hours than “any other wealthy nation.”
He says in 2022, U.S. employees logged:
• 204 more hours than workers in Japan
• 279 more hours than the UK
• 470 more hours than Germany pic.twitter.com/FLShtdaTos— The Recount (@therecount) March 14, 2024
Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee’s decision was the “best ruling” that district attorney Fani Willis could have hoped for, a law professor said.
The judge concluded that the facts “do not reveal an actual conflict of interest,” and any appearance of conflict can be easily remedied by removing Nathan Wade as lead prosecutor, Georgia State University’s Anthony Michael Kreis told the New York Times, adding:
And even better for Willis, this is unlikely to be disturbed on appeal.
Another law professor at Georgia State University, Clark D Cunningham, told the paper that even if Wade steps down as special prosecutor, he believes that Willis’s troubles are “far from over”.
Donald Trump and his co-defendants will almost certainly appeal against the ruling, Cunningham said, adding that McAfee’s order gave them plenty of basis to argue that removing Wade isn’t enough to remedy what the judge called “an odor of mendacity”.
