What Was She Thinking?

Hire Your Alleged Married Lover to Lead the Most Important Criminal Case in History?

When you are raised middle class and born to a subordinated caste in general, and African-American in particular, you are keenly aware of the burden you carry and you know that working twice as hard is a given. But more important, you know there will be no latitude for a misstep, so you must try to be virtually perfect at all times merely to tread water. You live with the double standard even though you do not like it. You know growing up that you cannot get away with the things that your white friends might skate by with — adolescent pranks or shoplifting on a dare or cursing out a teacher. You knew better.

— Isabel Wilkerson, Caste — The Origins of Our Discontents, pp. 221–22, 2020

I can’t spit on the sidewalk without it being headline news.

— Chicago’s first black mayor, Harold Washington, 1983

Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis has finally (sort of) addressed the allegations leveled against her and her hand-picked “special” prosecutor by one of Trump’s co-defendants in the sweeping election subversion case against him and them.

Unlike the various federal cases being brought against Trump for his many crimes against the whole people of the United States of America, Georgia allows cameras in the courtroom. As US citizens, and particularly black people, we have watched, first with curiosity, then in open-mouthed amazement, and finally, with a deep sense of pride, as this bald, bearded, tall black man stood shoulder-to-shoulder alongside D.A. Fani Willis. Together they fearlessly attempted to finally force “Criminal Defendant” Donald John Trump to account for his crimes against the whole people of the state of Georgia.

Who is Nathan Wade?

Nathan Wade, Esq. is a black man. He began his legal career first as a private criminal defense lawyer, and soon thereafter became a judge for a municipal court in the Atlanta suburbs.

Thus, Judge Wade was unknown and relatively inexperienced at the criminal bar of Atlanta when his alleged lover, District Attorney Fani Willis thrust him into the brightest of all spotlights as “special counsel” in perhaps the most high-profile and landmark criminal case in American history — the prosecution of a former president of the United States.

Attorney/Judge Wade is accused of participating in an unethical, if not illegal, ongoing “romantic” affair with the district attorney. Indeed, the defense’s court filing averred that their relationship was the single most important, if not the only, reason she chose him for the high-profile, high-paying job.

In the late 1990s, attorney Nathan Wade switched sides and served in the Cobb County Solicitor’s Office prosecuting misdemeanor traffic violations. You know, people who dared contest speeding or parking tickets. That about covers his prosecutorial experience.

Then, as an associate judge in Marietta, a leafy Atlanta suburb of about 60,000, Judge Wade was given more responsibility in that he heard cases dealing with some actual but still misdemeanor crimes. He continued to handle traffic tickets and violations of city ordinances, though.

He then entered the big time. As a Cobb County judge in 2020, Judge Wade was chosen by that county’s sheriff to investigate the disturbing pattern of deaths at his jail. Shortly thereafter, Judge Wade told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he would issue a report about the jail, saying, “If we find it, we’ll report it. It’ll be written up.”

But, five months later, in October 2020, he said in open court that he had not made or kept any notes or records of his interviews with jail personnel, according to 11 Alive, the Atlanta NBC affiliate.

“I have obviously my brainchild, what’s going on in my mind about it,” he said. “That’s what I have.”

The Allegation

District attorney Willis and Judge Wade are accused of using a good portion of his $650,000 earnings over three years-–clocking in at about $25,000 per month from the state of Georgia — on exotic vacations together, including forays into Napa Valley and the pristine, white sandy beaches of the Caribbean Sea.

The head of the Georgia Republican Party, Josh McKoon, said that all criminal charges in the Trump case should be put on hold while these allegations against D.A. Willis and Judge Wade are investigated.

Ashleigh Merchant is the lawyer representing Michael Roman. She uncovered this open secret and filed the instant motion to dismiss. Roman is one of the nineteen people accused by D.A. Fani Willis’ office over their efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss. Roman himself was a high-up muckety-muck in that failed presidential campaign.

Interestingly, defense attorney Merchant’s filing did not include any actual proof of the relationship between the two prosecutors. As we will see, she did not need to provide much hard evidence. It was enough that she noted that the two black lawyers had been seen by whole hordes of folk operating “in a personal relationship capacity” in and around black Atlanta’s vibrant nightlife and hot spots.

This brother was appointed by this sister on November 1, 2021 to not merely join but lead the investigation against Trump, et al. The very next damn day, on November 2, 2021, he goes traipsing on down to Domestic Relations court and filed for divorce from his wife of twenty-four years.

Most of those divorce papers are sealed. But among the few that are not sealed is a citation of contempt of court alleging that Judge Wade had failed to comply with the discovery process in the case despite repeated orders to do so. Judge Wade’s now estranged wife, Joycelyn Wade, has moved for a court order demanding attorneys’ fees and other expenses even before the case concludes. She’s also accused him of hiding funds from her, her lawyers, and the court.

Jocelyn Wade has subpoenaed the district attorney (the proverbial “other woman”) to give testimony in the divorce case. At this writing, there is no word as to whether D.A. Willis will comply with the subpoena.

Motion to Dismiss

Defense attorney Merchant argued that the case against her client, indeed all of his co-defendants, including Trump, should be dismissed forthwith, in part because Willis’ office did not secure proper authorization to hire Judge Wade as a special prosecutor in the first place. However, a Fulton County attorney, Soo Jo, said through a spokeswoman that “county approval is not required in this state for a district attorney to appoint a special assistant district attorney in a specific case.”

When asked during an interview in 2022, D.A. Willis said that she had chosen Wade because he was a trusted friend and because he would be able to weather the heavy criticism and scrutiny that this case would surely attract. And, she said that she had known him in a mentor-mentee relationship (she was the mentee) when she had served briefly as chief magistrate judge for the City of South Fulton, another Atlanta suburb, beginning in 2019. She had been a student and he was the teacher in the “judge’s education” class.

The District Attorney Speaks To God

Last Sunday, the day before the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday, D.A. Willis finally appeared publicly at Atlanta’s Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. She did not directly address these latest allegations of an affair between her and her now very special counsel, but she “fiercely” rejected the notion that hiring Judge Wade to oversee the election interference matter was itself improper.

“I’m a little confused,” sayeth D.A. Willis. “I appointed three special counselors. It’s my right to do [so]; paid them all the same hourly rate. They only attack one.” She then cried racism: “I hired one white woman, a good personal friend and a great lawyer, a superstar, I tell you. I hired one white man — brilliant — my friend and a great lawyer. And I hired one Black man, another superstar, a great friend and a great lawyer.”

Again, she did not name Judge Wade (or the other two special prosecutors); but just as she did with the two white lawyers, she praised “the black one’s” character and his “impeccable credentials.”

“The Black man I chose has been a judge for more than 10 years,” she continued. “[He] run[s] a private practice more than 20 [years]. Represented businesses in civil litigation … served a prosecutor, a criminal defense lawyer, special assistant attorney general.”

And then this top law enforcement official in Georgia’s largest and most populous county did something I’ve never seen or heard a lawyer do in public (over the course of my thirty-five years as a paralegal in the civil and criminal courts of Chicago): D.A. Willis began speaking not to the congregants sitting before her, but she started what sounded much like a prayer or public “conversation” with God.

How come, God, the same Black man I hired was acceptable when a Republican in another county hired him and paid him twice the rate? God, isn’t it them who’s playing the race card when they only question one? They’re playing the race card when they constantly think I need someone from some other jurisdiction in some other state to tell me how to do a job I’ve [done] almost 30 years.

I’m just asking, God, is it that some will never see a Black man as qualified, no matter his achievements?” she asked The Lord.

She also talked about the toll these fresh allegations have taken on her, calling the last several days a “low point” in her life, and she repeatedly described herself as “flawed” and “imperfect” during the speech.

She then got straight-up political, calling out her Republican critics, especially Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has, on cue, demanded an “immediate investigation” into Willis and Wade last week.

Dear God, I do not want to be like those that attacked me, Willis said. I never want to be a Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has never met me but has allowed her spirit to be filled with hate. How does this woman, who has the honor of being a leader in my state, how is it that she has not reached out to me?

She can tell me, ‘I don’t agree with anything you’re doing, but I do not agree with people threatening your life or the life of your family,’” Willis continued. “How did such a woman come to think that it was normal and normalized that another woman was worthy of such cruelty? I would never wish for her to have the experiences or the threats that I receive, the derogatory name calling, the being doxed multiple times.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee said during a hearing last Friday that he is waiting for a formal response from the district attorney’s office about this whole mess, but will hear defendant Roman’s motion in February, The Associated Press reported.

Trump, of course, has jumped all over this latest Willis scandal with both feet. His team has called for “immediate dismissal” of the entire case.

“Black Girl Magic” will only go so far.

Along with most black people, I have heretofore praised Fani Willis for her courage and tenacity in prosecuting black folks’ greatest, latest, 21st-century white supremacist nemesis, Donald J. Trump.

We thought that her misstep in contributing money to a political opponent of another defendant in this selfsame case was just that, a misstep, a hiccup. The judge described her unseemly action then as a “What were you thinking” moment. He then sternly warned her to be careful and not to do it again.

But this latest charge is damn-near unforgivable. Not simply because it is ugly and unethical on its face. But because she simply should have known better.

Blacks must be twice as good.

It appears that D.A. Willis never had, ignored, or forgot “the talk” that was often learned by all overachieving black folks (and most underachievers as well), and delivered by our elders from the end of a green switch: We have got to be twice as good to get half as much. Our education, our speech, our mannerisms — everything — must be “impeccable.” Put in more modern parlance, we must be Barack Obama.

Speaking of Obama…especially Obama

From 1978 through 1984, the first black mayor of Chicago was my neighbor. I lived on the 7th floor and he was on the 2nd of an apartment building called “The Hampton House” in Chicago’s tony Hyde Park neighborhood. Often as I passed through the lobby on my way to work, I would see then Congressman Harold Washington standing at the security desk talking to the security guard. Often I would stop and make small talk with the representative.

In ’83, Congressman Washington became Mayor Washington. One morning just after his election to City Hall’s Fifth Floor, I stopped to congratulate him on his victory. The press had been all over him about some inane issue, some personal issue, that had nothing whatever to do with his governance of the City of Chicago.

“Man,” he said. “I can’t spit on the sidewalk anymore without it making headlines. Next day, there’ll be a picture in the Tribune going ‘This is mayoral spit. Does Chicago Deserve Better?’”

Harold understood that black elected officials must be damn-near perfect. Their “flaws” must be kept to an absolute minimum.

Commentary

D.A. Fani Willis had no business hiring her alleged married lover to lead the most consequential criminal case in American history.

As she has stated herself, the white racists, the white supremacists, and the white nationalists have all been waiting for this moment because she has sullied their “fair-haired” boy, their “Great White Hope.” For a moment there it looked as though she would be written down as perhaps the most consequential woman in American history.

To the District Attorney:

Madame District Attorney Willis, these allegations let a whole lot of black people down. You have disappointed many, many millions who have been counting on you. Depending on what this judge decides, you may have just blown this case entirely. And for what? Why? You have let your libido overrule your life: your education, your better judgment, your best judgment, your long hard years of experience…and your common sense — in what is the without doubt most important case affecting black people since at least the 1954 “landmark” case of Brown vs. Board of Education.

404 Years.