Just an hour before “Politically Georgia” aired, Judge Scott McAfee ruled that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis could continue prosecuting the election interference case against former President Donald Trump and his co-defendants. But she can only do so if she drops her special prosecutor and former love interest Nathan Wade from her team.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution editor Shannon McCaffrey and Georgia State law professor Anthony Michael Kreis discuss the decision.
McCaffrey says that even though Willis was allowed to stay on the case, this ruling “is not a complete get-out-of-jail-free card for Fani Willis.” McAfee scolded Willis over her relationship with Wade, calling it a “tremendous lapse in judgment.”
McCaffrey says the next step in the case would be for Willis to dismiss Wade, although there is no timeline for when that could happen. “I would predict that Fani Willis works as hard as she can to get the focus back on this case and off of her,” she says.
Then, a pivot to Capitol Hill, where independent journalist Michael Jones explains how a bill calling for a forced sale or ban of TikTok moved forward so quickly in Congress. “If you understand how Congress works, that is not typical of how Congress works. (It) is a very slow institution,” says Jones, the author of the Once Upon a Hill newsletter.
The fast-tracked legislation centers on national security concerns about the app’s millions of American users. Chinese parent company ByteDance owns the app.
The bill passed in the U.S. House earlier this week on a vote of 352-65.
Monday on “Politically Georgia”: AJC colleagues James Salzer and Maya T. Prabhu give us an update as the legislative session winds down.
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