Irrespective of how you feel about the downpour of indictments on former President Donald J. Trump, are you the slightest bit troubled by the utter lack of curiosity on the part of Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis?
During a brief Q&A period Monday night, when she was asked about how the so-called “fictitious” indictment got posted online, she resorted, in effect, to Freddie Prinze’s catch phrase, “It’s not my job, man.”
It’s something the clerk’s office does, she said, and she has no knowledge of how that works.
Let’s take that as face value, just for fun.
Some unknown person apparently hacked a state website to post fictitious information (which actually won’t help or harm Trump’s case) and she blows off the question? Not even a “We will have to look into that.”
Nothing. Zero curiosity about what is — let’s face it — a criminal act. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but Willis is not a cat.
It calls into question her zeal to enforce the law against all parties, and handed the Trumpsters a handy talking point — she is so biased against Trump she ignores other law-breaking.
As I said, the fake post is immaterial to the outcome of the trial — when it happens — but it created another fracture in our failing faith in the legal system.
Willis is guilty of that.
Maybe he should send VP Harris to fire her. Like he did in Ukraine to protect his sons company.
Proof from a legitimate source? Oh, I forgot. You guys don’t do proof.
Everyone but you knows Biden withheld money from Ukraine until the prosecutor investigating his son’s company was fired.
Everyone knows Obama withheld the funds. Biden was only a messenger boy.
I think that’s bullshit. Why did they want the prosecutor fired? We have no right to tell another country what to do.
Because the prosecutor was believed by the U.S. To be corrupt. Have your helper monkey read actual news stories to you.
EVERYONE knows Trump tried to extort Zelensky. Thank GOD LTC Vindman was listening on the call. Vindman is a real patriot unlike draft- dodging Trump traitors.
Who is the “he” you reference? The only male mentioned is Trump. I think Keith is right about where your head is.
Biden is the he.
Biden is the he.how did you not know that. I think your losing it because of your Trump derangement syndrome.
Biden Derangemwnt Syndrome. He was not mentioned in the post; had zero to do with him.
I was trying to be sarcastic but you didn’t get it. Seems I have to explain everything to you anymore.
Your helper monkey will tell you sarcasm does not work in print without one of these 😄
Your monkey will remind you, as you have gaping holes in your brain.
P.S.: The comedian who blames the audience for not laughing at his jokes has a very short career.
👍
It was probably an administrative error. She has people to look into that. She has bigger fish to fry.
All she had to do was say “We will look into that.” “Bigger fish” is a big cop out,
Maybe the politic thing to say, but inaccurate. To start with an “indictment” was not posted. A docket entry stating that an indictment had been filed (which it had not at the time of the on-line entry) and, as docket entries do, listing the charges. A court’s electronic docket lists all filings and orders in a case, together with a summary of what the document says. I haven’t done, and haven’t seen a line by line comparison to see if the docket entry accurately reflected the actual indictment, but from what I can tell, it is seems to be pretty accurate. Here’s the link: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/gdpzwwwqyvw/Details.pdf So what it looks most like is a premature posting. People who want to can look for the differences can do it. As far as I can tell nobody has posted the new docket entry to compare for differences. One thing that does stand out is that it does not list any of the defendants except Trump.
The prosecutor’s office does not prepare, write or post docket entries on the court’s website. The clerk’s office does. There are actually two dockets in cases like this: the public docket and the sealed docket. The sealed docket in this case would include all the grand jury proceedings–subpoena’s, hearing dates, jury selection, witnesses examined, filed testimony transcripts, documents presented, etc. It is probably miles long.
It could plausibly include “proposed indictment submitted to the grand jury” and the most likely scenario, in my view, is that a clerk prepped a docket entry from such a document. The clerk’s employees have access to all these sensitive materials, and are supposed to know which docket on which they are to be filed. Grand Jury secrecy is a serious thing. And yes, violating grand jury secrecy is a serious thing.
It’s not big news usually, but stuff like this happens. I was involved in a case where a document that was submitted under seal ended up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. The defendant’s stock dropped and they raised holy hell–accusing us (the plaintiff’s lawyers) of terrible crimes. Were prosecutors called in? Nope. It was, at least in the first instance, a matter for the court administration to investigate. I had to file an affidavit listing all reporters that I knew, and all my contacts with them during the case, and swear up and down that I didn’t leak it.
Turned out that a clerk had inadvertently placed it in the public file for a few days before the error was caught. (It is believed in legal circles that journalists maintain relationships with court clerks to get them to pass on information about newsworthy court-filings. Do you know if this is true Stu? Or are there just super-vigilant court-watchers?)
The upshot is that Willis is right. Currently it is for the clerk and court administration to look into. They are SET UP to look into this stuff. In they find wrongdoing, then they call in the cops and prosecutors. It would have been a lie to say, “we will look into it” as it would have inappropriate for her office to step all over the court’s/clerks’ toes. The chances that it is a hack are slim to none. You got numerous folks at the clerk’s office with access. It IS the clerk’s job, in the first instance, to find out. If you announce that your wallet is missing, you’d be upset if the cops swooped in to interrogate your friends and family before you made sure you didn’t misplace it or leave it in yesterday’s pants. (Happens to me all the time–yesterday’s pants, not the cops swooping in).
But you are right, she shouldn’t have been so dismissive from a political point of view. Doubtless, like me, after 30 years of dealing the court system, she knew all of the above, and knew that the court administration/clerk was, as I said, in the first instance the responsible party and equipped to track down the problem. And second, that this was very likely a goof-up, that the clerk’s office would have to decide the seriousness of–firing, discipline, prosecution. (What would be the motive, when everybody knew the indictment was going to drop soon anyway? Tell me the motive for this misconduct.) She should have said, “I am sure that the clerk’s office is diligently looking into this, and should they find possible criminal wrongdoing, we will thoroughly investigate it and prosecute any responsible parties.”
As the wokester’s might say the comment was “insensitive’ and perhaps a “microaggression” by minimizing the concerns of all the people who believe there is “systemic bias” among prosecutors and the court system. If, for example, this had happened with Mumia’s indictment, would you be waving this as evidence of a racially biased prosecution designed to silence a political activist? Doubtful. But, in fairness, that is not analogous to what you said.
Instead, one could reasonably say, along the lines you use, this is a bad look when so many people think it’s all about racism, and that prosecutors only care about crime when committed by politically active Black people. Rather than feed that narrative, she could/should have phrased it better. So, after all this–you’re right. But this is a mole hill, not a mountain.
Every state has different laws & procedures. Hell, Louisiana operates on the Napoleonic code.
The states are considered “labs of democracy”. So each state investigates, indices, and prosecutes differently. Omly at the Federal level is it consistent.
The official explanation is, clerical error. Seems reasonable. All Willis had ro say is, we will look into it. How hatd would that be?
I think what she said is a lot less important than what she did, and what happens from here. One would hope they track down the source of the post and remedy the situation. This occurrence will, unfortunately, give those who love such things more fodder to fill social media with ridiculous conspiracy theories. That’s the bad thing about what happened.
You are making my point. This was an unforced error. She has to better pretend she is impartial.
Just more proof of corrupt incompetence by the democrats.
And the republicans are choir boys right?
Not all of them. We have people in our swamp to.
And the biggest swamp dweller, Daniel, is that orange-skinned POS!
With your head still up his ass!
Your like a broken record
Daniel, it is funny to see you accuse me of sounding like a broken record because I mentioned, twice, about you having your head up the ass of the orange-skinned POS, or SOB. You mentioned, several times, in the previous article something very similar.
And, Danny Boy, let us not forget how many times you have talked about someone having TDS.
There are other things as well that I won’t go into right now.
It looks like you have SMI.
The closer they get to the nomiations, the more indictments will come. You don’t need Mr.Spock to see this coming.
I know of no others in the pipeline.
Yet
Orchestrated walk with a large accompanying team and photographer; all for show insult to the people.
Stu: your comment about ‘our failing faith in the legal system’ goes to the point of my comment in your previous column: we are losing (or have already lost) faith in our government at all three branches: Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. No fear of any other nation attacking us as we are committing suicide.
Vince, I can’t argue with your point. Faith in the Executive branch depends entirely on who is sitting in the Oval Office at the present time. Faith in the Judicial system is still largely dependent on juries, which are us. Faith in Legislative? It’s Congress, the weak link in our entire democratic system. Want to blame the media as well, often called the fourth branch of the governance of this country. Like the Executive branch, it all depends on who you’re reading/hearing and how you’re interpolating what you read/hear.
Not to quibble, but it used to be that we respected the Executive, even if we did not vote for the scoundrel. So far as the judiciary, it is niot those on the juries we have to fear, it is the process of confirmation of judges (especially the SCOTUS), which has become a vicious man/womanhunt, a rush to see how fast one can destroy a potential jurist’s reputation. Congress? With an astounding lack of turnover, a smug, greedy collection of entrenched second-rate pols.