The self-inflicted wounds among Former President Donald Trump’s legal persecutors are working to his advantage and potentially pushing a politically crippling judgment beyond the November election.
Judge Scott McAfee, presiding in Atlanta, said Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis can keep prosecuting Mr. Trump over his 2020 election challenges but the “appearance of impropriety” demanded either she or her ex-boyfriend, Nathan Wade, exit the case, giving the ex-president fuel to fire up his base.
Within hours, Mr. Wade quit the team, saying his resignation was “in the interest of democracy.”
Ms. Willis’s unforced error shifted the spotlight from Mr. Trump, who famously leaned on state Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find enough 2020 votes to give him a Georgia victory, to her personal life. And the ordeal is expected to slow down the case.
“That’s all self-inflicted wounds down there for what some of us thought was the strong case. You’ve got a tape recording of him talking to the secretary of state,” said David Schultz, a distinguished professor of politics and legal studies at Hamline University in Minnesota. “He’s generally done well, but he benefits from the missteps and gotten help from the Supreme Court.”
Elsewhere, a hush-money trial set to begin March 25 could be delayed at least a month after Mr. Trump’s lawyers complained that New York prosecutors failed to hand over critical evidence.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg agreed to a 30-day delay so Mr. Trump has sufficient time to review the new material. Mr. Trump wasted little time using the delay to his rhetorical advantage as he campaigns as the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.
“They illegally withheld thousands of pages of documents,” he wrote on Truth Social. “This will make Fani and her ‘lover’ look like small potatoes!!!”
Some things haven’t gone Mr. Trump’s way.
Ms. Willis can forge ahead on the Georgia case even though she has lost momentum and a federal judge in Florida refused to dismiss an indictment over Mr. Trump’s hoarding of sensitive government documents after defense lawyers complained about the vagueness of a World War I-era law being wielded against him.
Still, the federal trial in Floria is unlikely to start in May as planned, and special counsel Jack Smith’s attempt to put Mr. Trump on trial in March over his post-election actions was blown to smithereens by the Supreme Court’s decision to take up Mr. Trump’s claim of presidential immunity for election-related actions he took in the final days of his term.
The postponements suggest Mr. Trump’s attack-and-delay strategy is working.
“It will work if he avoids any conviction between now and November. What polling shows is that one thing that would turn a sizable portion of the electorate against him is an actual conviction,” said Charles S. Bullock III, a politics professor at the University of Georgia.
These voters “are not the MAGA red-hat wearers,” Mr. Bullock said. “These are Republicans who are generally gonna vote Republican, and would still prefer [Trump] to Biden.”
A conviction, he said, could “shake their faith.”
There is no trial date set for Mr. Trump’s case in Georgia, which alleges the ex-president and 18 co-defendants violated state racketeering laws with a plot to overturn President Biden’s 2020 win in the southern state.
A grand jury last year indicted Mr. Trump and his associates. Yet for months, it seemed like Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade were the ones on trial.
Trump co-defendant Michael Roman filed a bombshell motion saying Ms. Willis had a romantic relationship with Mr. Wade, who was hired as a special prosecutor in November 2021.
Defense attorneys said the pair had an impermissible financial incentive to pursue the prosecution.
Judge McAfee concluded that Ms. Willis did not have a financial conflict meriting disqualification from the state racketeering case. Still, he dinged the prosecutorial pair for creating a “financial cloud of impropriety and potential untruthfulness.”
He also scolded Ms. Willis for suggesting criticism of Mr. Wade was racially motivated in a church speech to a majority-Black congregation around Martin Luther King Day.
Mr. Trump’s attorney, Steve Sadow, said Friday he plans to trip up the prosecution wherever possible.
“While respecting the Court’s decision, we believe that the Court did not afford appropriate significance to the prosecutorial misconduct of Willis and Wade, including the financial benefits, testifying untruthfully about when their personal relationship began, as well as Willis’ extrajudicial MLK ‘church speech,’ where she played the race card and falsely accused the defendants and their counsel of racism,” Mr. Sadow said. “We will use all legal options available as we continue to fight to end this case, which should never have been brought in the first place.”
Mr. Trump says the criminal cases against him are a Democratic plot to thwart his presidential bid.
If he wins the election, Mr. Trump could try to pardon himself for federal offenses or claim he cannot be prosecuted while he performs his presidential duties. Legal scholars question whether a president can pardon himself.
“We’ve got a couple of open questions here,” Mr. Schultz said. “Whether a sitting president can face a criminal trial, and if a sitting president can get delay for a criminal trial that takes place at the state level.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.