It may be early for a news post, but I’m so pleased that I don’t want to wait.
Breaking: In a 23 page ruling, Judge McAfee rules insufficient evidence of impropriety and that Fani Willis can continue to prosecute the RICO indictment.
— Jack E. Smith ⚖️ (@7Veritas4) March 15, 2024
I have gotten so tired of judicial overreach that it’s a happy surprise when it doesn’t happen. When it comes to the courts right now, I feel like the dog that expects to be beaten, rather than the dog that is occasionally beaten. What a relief this ruling is!
In other news, I had misinterpreted Alvin Bragg’s “I won’t object to a 30-day delay”. He apparently wasn’t volunteering for a 30-day delay on this – this was more of him setting down a marker – along the lines of I can live with a 30-day delay because of this bullshit, but it had better not be longer than that.
Totally open thread.
Update: Oh, and if you donated for a match for Worker Power in AZ overnight, you can let me know in the comments here. frosty’s match is still active, so all donations up to $25 per person are being matched.
Chris Johnson
Nice. Justice can exist. Kind of like government can function :)
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
rikyrah
Good news 🗞️ 😊
Shalimar
Just from listening to Lisa Rubin on MSNBC, it sounds like he believed all of the innuendo against Wade and Willis, repeated it all in the decision and chastised them both, but stopped short of removing Willis from the case.
This is the worst thing he could write given the lack of evidence for a conflict of interest. At least Willis can remain as prosecutor. The case would die without her. But this decision gives the defense lawyers so much more shit they can throw at walls.
Kay
I didn’t think there was a conflict so I’m glad.
Kay
@Shalimar:
Do you think it will matter? I don’t really. The Trumpists won’t accept that the trial was legit but they never would have anyway.
WaterGirl
@Shalimar: I haven’t gotten that far in my reading yet. That’s disappointing. And my opinion of McAfee has taken a big dive – he shouldn’t have allowed the big open public display of lies in the first place.
Makes me wonder if McAfee walked right up to the line of misconduct himself – because he is running for judge for the first time. (His current spot is an appointment.)
But bottom line, Fani Willis stays on the case, and McAfee bought himself a black eye for himself as well as for Willis.
TBone
Not sure why the male pundits are the only opinion givers right now and saying the RICO case will now be postponed until after election. Not enough coffee yet. I want to hear from females on this. Katie Phang to the rescue! STFU Moaning Joe.
Another Scott
Good, and expected, news for a Friday morning.
TIFG’s monsters will do what they do, no matter the substance.
Let’s take the win and keep moving forward!
[eta:] TheHill.com says Judge says Wade (or Willis) has to leave the case to remove appearance of impropriety, which sucks. But it doesn’t kill the case.
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Kay: I agree.
The Trumpy people would be throwing shit at the walls, no matter what the outcome – unless the case would have been completely dismissed, with prejudice.
jonas
Throughout this whole thing, I never understood how having an affair with someone on your prosecutorial team — if that’s even what happened — constituted a “conflict of interest” with regard to the case brought against Trump and his co-defendants. A conflict of interest would be if Willis had been sleeping with one of *Trump’s* lawyers, or stood to gain financially if Trump were to go to jail, or something like that.
This was just another classic delaying tactic by Trump’s legal team. McAfee may have ultimately ruled against Trump (while sending Willis back to the drawing board on a couple of other counts), but the fact that he even entertained all this bullshit for so many weeks is a setback for the integrity of the legal system, imho.
Shalimar
@Kay: In legal terms, I don’t think it will matter at all. In trying to keep up to date on the news of the trial, it will make it so much more negative and hard to follow. Which I think is one of their goals, get good people so disgusted they tune out.
OzarkHillbilly
@Shalimar: They were already throwing this shit on the wall like a half empty ketchup bottle. Now they will continue to, with even more fervor (if that’s possible) and even louder (if that’s possible) which will just make them look even weaker (if that’s possible) and whinier (if that’s possible).
Scout211
NBC News says that the judge ruled the case can continue only if Willis or Wade remove themselves from the case.
ETA: so partial win. Will Wade remove himself now?
OzarkHillbilly
@TBone: It’s a fairly safe bet this will be appealed. And then appealed again.
eclare
I am very relieved.
Shalimar
@WaterGirl: I think McAfee’s decision is entirely in pursuit of his own ambitions. He was in a no-win situation. His decision was going to piss a lot of people off and he needs all the votes he can get. So he watered it down so both sides are going to be disappointed but they also both got something. No one is going to be angry enough at him to remember this in November.
Shalimar
@Scout211: Wade will be fired if he doesn’t remove himself. It isn’t a hard choice for Willis. She might as well retire from her job if she chose to remove herself and her office from this high-profile case instead.
TBone
@OzarkHillbilly: of course but we need the prosecutors’ evidence to be heard publicly, front and center, before the election.
Matt McIrvin
The breaking news headline on my phone was that he “ruled that either Willis or prosecutor Wade must step aside,” basically framing it as bad for the prosecution.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott:
Are you still at the point where you expect the courts/judges to do the right thing?
I no longer am at that point, so this is serious question.
NotMax
@TBone
All depends on whether the prosecution opts to appeal or to convene a new grand jury in the task of re-indicting the limited number of counts recently dismissed. Either of those actions could extend the time before the start of trial by a significant number of months.
TBone
Lisa Rubin quote when news hit: “Boy, bye!” 😂
Another Scott
@Shalimar: He seems to take his baby-splitting and both-sidesing very seriously when legally and normatively the case never should have been able to go forward. (But IANAL.)
:-/
I’ve never been much of a fan of elected judges. Appointed ones have issues too, but having a popularity contest for a position that is supposed to be technocratic and fair and unbiased seems like a contradiction in terms.
Oh well.
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Shalimar: I will still be angry about this in November, but I realize that matters to exactly no one.
TBone
@NotMax: thanks. I’m still swilling covfefe in an effort to clear my head. Late start. Rubin said she’s unfamiliar with the complications of appeal rules in Georgia.
evodevo
I just contributed $25 to Worker Power AZ
Soprano2
@Shalimar: I think he desperately wanted to disqualify her because he knew if he did the whole case would go away, but like Kay said he couldn’t find an actual legal basis to do so. He settled for scolding her like she’s a small child instead.
Shalimar
@OzarkHillbilly: I don’t think the shit-flinging can get worse than it has been for the last 6 weeks. But it will continue at this pace indefinitely, and there will be frequent negative stories about Willis for the rest of her life. All the stuff Republicans do gets memory-holed by the next day. Anything Democrats do is talked about forever. I hate our news media so much.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Scout211
Good point.
Kay
@Shalimar:
The delays are a problem in terms of the administration of justice but that’s a broader failing of the legal system, not just this case. Well-off people game with delays and nobody games with delays like Donald Trump.
It sucks that he’s making one of them withdraw because that would have been the remedy for an actual conflict and I don’t think there is one. If people in the county don’t like that these two had an affair they can try to get rid of Willis thru the political process – the affair isn’t a conflict and shouldn’t have been a legal issue. If it wouldn’t have been a conflict if they were friends (and it wouldn’t have been) having sex should not change it to “yes, there’s a conflict”. That’s just nonsense.
Judge is a coward. There are a lot of cowards, we’re finding out. We need better, stronger people.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: I expect that eventually, except for a few religio-culture-war things, and some corporations are people my friends things, that the courts will eventually mostly get it right.
Still.
We wouldn’t be where we are if the laws didn’t have these loopholes that the RWNJ courts can drive trucks through. It’s not all on them.
It starts with voting sensible people into office, and lighting a fire under them to do their jobs.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: There’s no way that Fani Willis will appeal this or convene a new grand jury to get those 6 counts back.
She needs to move full steam ahead. Hopefully they were smart enough to have other folks in the office up to speed so this case can continue to move forward with a Wade replacement.
Shalimar
@WaterGirl: I will be angry about it too. I loathe McAfee right now. But you and I aren’t voters in Fulton county.
TBone
This is a victory for women IMO and it came during Womens’ History Month. Fani is making history and will not be shamed into submission.
WaterGirl
@evodevo: You have been seen!
TBone
@WaterGirl: she’s got the Georgia “RICO King” still on her team. Can’t remember his name r.n.
Shalimar
@Soprano2: I agree with you and Kay. If he had removed Willis and her office, it would have been overturned on appeal.
Melancholy Jaques
@WaterGirl:
I, too, will still be angry, but it’s going to be pretty far down the list of things that make me angry. All these cases against Trump are a sideshow to the election. No matter what happens in these cases, we have to win the election.
WaterGirl
@Kay: 100% agree.
eclare
@Shalimar:
She should have demanded Wade’s resignation as soon as this surfaced, and she has displayed extraordinarily bad judgment on more than one occasion. As I said above, I’m relieved that she was not disqualified so the case has a chance to move forward, but she has made her job much harder than it should have been.
OzarkHillbilly
@TBone: And that won’t happen until there is a trial.
Anonymous At Work
Started reading around my day-job but it reads like a split-the-baby-nobody-appeal-anything-endlessly-please ruling.
Frankensteinbeck
“Look, it’s not against the rules anywhere, but a black woman was dating and there has to be something wrong with that.” That’s what I’m hearing.
Princess
@Shalimar: Meh. They were always going to appeal. I think people have made up their minds about Willis on partisan lines anyway. Bottom line, the case moves forward. That’s good.
Melancholy Jaques
@eclare:
Agree completely.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
The jury’s still out on that (so to speak).
TBone
@OzarkHillbilly: I just heard there may be appeal(s) before trial. I expect all kinds of malarkey. Big picture is a win for Fani and women in general.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: We have to fight that much harder for wins on all fronts in November.
I had used the “This fight is for everything.” tag a lot in 2020, but I haven’t used it at all this year. Our institutions are in a much worse place than I understood in 2020, so that doesn’t seem strong enough.
It’s like the fight is for everything. Squared. Everything to infinity.
Soprano2
Yep, evidently he has to run for election this time so he’s terrified of the MAGA voters who wanted her disqualified so the case would go away. He tiptoed right up to that line, but couldn’t find anything to justify disqualification in the actual law so instead he made her sound bad and corrupt in his ruling.
Ruviana
@Matt McIrvin: This. Everything I saw before I came here made it sound like she was out.
WaterGirl
@Frankensteinbeck:
That’s what I’m seeing, too. I added “with power” and made it a rotating tag.
“We’ve come a long way, baby!” (bullshit)
Jackie
Great news to wake up to!🌅
Soprano2
@WaterGirl: The fight is to keep the U.S. from turning into Hungary or Russia, which is what the MAGA’s want to do to us. They want to have the appearance of democracy and elections, but in a system where everything is rigged to help them win.
Chief Oshkosh
@Another Scott: From a well-informed and experienced friend, I’m told she likely would not have been the point person anyway as she has other attorneys who have stronger in-person courtroom skills. But who knows?
In any event, the new law the Governor Hick McFuckstick just signed is legalizes a hunting expedition whose goal is Willis’ head a spike, so keeping a lower profile probably will benefit the case. Unfortunately, I suspend the hunt will effectively end her prosecutorial career in the state.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: True enough. I get so mad when people declare things as if they can see into the future and know what’s going to happen, with certainty.
So I’ll just say that I will eat my hat if Fani Willis does either of those things.
OzarkHillbilly
@TBone: There will be. It’s all trump has to defend himself with..
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
Donated last night (only $20) and posted in bc the comments, but it may have been a dead thread by then.
WaterGirl
@TBone:
Wow, I don’t see this as a win for women in general, not at all. And the whole thing is a loss for Fani overall, though I do agree that the case going forward is everything.
Chief Oshkosh
@Shalimar:
There will be a BIG chunk of black voters and an even bigger chunk of black women voters who will remember.
H.E.Wolf
Very fair points. (I’m guessing “technocratic”, in this context, means “expert in the law”.)
That said, it’s an individual voter’s choice whether to treat an election as a popularity contest, or as an opportunity to support the most well-qualified person for the job.
Finding information on judicial candidates can be challenging, but it’s available. Before I went freelance, I used to post info on my office-cubicle walls (along with voter registration forms) during election season, and was pleased to see that lots of folks stopped by to read before filling out their ballots.
And it was very satisfying to see a liberal state supreme court justice elected in Wisconsin last year: Janet Protasiewicz.
WaterGirl
@Soprano2: Nodding along as I read your comment.
Shalimar
@WaterGirl: I haven’t read the decision from the other day, but my understanding is that Willis can file an amended complaint for those 6 charges without having to go to a new grand jury. McAfee told her what the amended complaint needs to say.
lowtechcyclist
@WaterGirl:
And beyond. ;-)
OzarkHillbilly
@WaterGirl: Well, we can’t have an untarred successful black woman, now can we?
WaterGirl
@The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion: Got it! There is no “only”. Everything helps.
WaterGirl
@Chief Oshkosh: That’s why I don’t think Wilis will be voted out of office.
Shalimar
@Chief Oshkosh: I hope you are right
Chief Oshkosh
@Chief Oshkosh: Boy, a lot of typos in that one. Need that second cuppa stat!
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: Sadly, apparently we can not.
I very much appreciate that it’s not only the women on this blog who see that. That gives me hope.
Josie
@eclare:
This was my reaction, also. Both she and Wade should have realized the potential problem with their relationship and the danger to the case and the country.
John S.
@Shalimar:
Sometimes it gets memory holed before anyone even notices. Like the fact that star witness for the GOP, Alexander Smirnov, was basically paid $600k to lie by a company with ties to Trump.
Imagine the coverage if a Democrat had been accused of something like THAT.
Kay
@WaterGirl:
It’s going to be… interesting if a defendant can have a prosecutor removed if the prosecutor has a relationship with another prosecutor. Lawyers have lots of relationships with one another – does friendship count? I think it has to. “NO engaging in work relationships or you will be conflicted out of all cases”
Can they go to lunch? Attend a baseball game?
Fucking ridiculous. Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.
OzarkHillbilly
@WaterGirl: Same as it ever was.
Just look at what Michelle went thru for having the temerity to occupy the White House.
Shalimar
I’m not saying or advocating that anyone should shoot Donald Trump, but if this were a movie and someone did try to kill him, their catchphrase when they did it would be “delay this, bitch!”
MazeDancer
Andrew Weissmann is saying she has to recuse.
Of course, it’s ridiculous. But the Georgia Bar will be investigating. Attention will not go away.
It’s not the crime. It’s the cover-up. The judge criticizing their actions afterwards, and on the stand.. He didn’t care they had an affair.
Weissmann said they should have come clean at the beginning.
OTOH, though I love him, Andrew is used to being a rich guy with a world-heralded father. And not a Black woman who is under constant attack.
WaterGirl
@Kay: Everything you said.
McAfee did a lot of damage with this one. He fed the wolves and I hope it comes back to bite him in the ass.
WaterGirl
@MazeDancer: Fuck Andrew Weissmann on this one. I generally like him, but he can be an preening, arrogant ass, and his take on this pisses me off royally.
lowtechcyclist
@H.E.Wolf:
The problem is, you can’t expect voters to understand the job itself when the position is judge or sheriff, let alone register of wills or recorder of deeds.
They may have an idea in their heads, but hell, I don’t think I’m usually in a position to judge how well a judge or sheriff is doing their job, and I follow things a lot more closely than your average citizen.
I would like elected positions to be limited to positions that inherently require a generalist. President, governor, Congressperson, mayor, county council, stuff like that. The non-judicial specialists should be hired by and report to those generalists.
eclare
@WaterGirl:
Is she up for election this November?
OzarkHillbilly
@lowtechcyclist:
The only advantage of having spent so much time in the Crawford County courthouse is that I had a real good idea of who was or was not a decent judge or prosecutor when elections rolled around.
Jackie
@Melancholy Jaques:
100% agree. We are learning that depending on the justice system to oust TIFG is a waste of hope. Beat him in Nov and then let the multiple time loser live his next few years sitting in courts on trial after trial after trial.
TIFG’s worst fear is losing the presidency and losing any chance to quash the federal lawsuits. Let’s make sure his worst fear is realized!
Now, time for a second cuppa ☕️!
HumboldtBlue
A group of 31 former House Republicans sent Speaker Johnson a private letter urging him to bring the Ukraine aid bill to a House vote, The Bulwark reports
mrmoshpotato
Oh no. No no no.
Never to early to learn that Fani can continue caving in Dump’s disgusting orange fascist face.
And I’m sure Popehat would approve.
eclare
@MazeDancer:
Oh fuck that shit, Andrew.
Frankensteinbeck
@MazeDancer:
Her attitude in court sure didn’t sound like someone who’s going to recuse because misogynists and racists are gasping on their fainting couches.
Josie
@lowtechcyclist: I agree. In Texas, with the exception of federal district judges, all judges are elected. It causes people to be elected without much knowledge of their qualifications. For the Democratic primary I just voted in, there were at least a dozen races that I did not know who to vote for, and I do make an effort to keep up with such things,
Paul in KY
@Another Scott: IMO, she should never have hired him in 1st place. He sounds like a fine lawyer, but given their history, you gotta choose another one.
Soprano2
@lowtechcyclist: Here we vote on the public administrator, which is a position where a person needs to be bonded and have a lot of expertise in handling estates and stuff like that. A few years back, a Republican who couldn’t even get bonded because of things in her past was voted into office just because she had an “R” by her name. The previous public administrator, a Democrat who had been in the job for decades, ended up being appointed back to the job by the governor after the elected “R” was disqualified because she couldn’t get bonded. IMHO we shouldn’t be voting on jobs like that, those people should be hired by the county.
Quinerly
@eclare:
Agree 100%.
Self inflicted wound.
Jackie
@WaterGirl:
Weissmann is furious with Ailene Cannon so I think he’s temporarily taking his anger out on Fani. By the end of the day, after thinking on this more, he’ll probably reconsider his initial reaction. He’s done that before.
Jay
@Paul in KY:
part of the problem, was that nobody wanted the job.
Shit flinging monkeys online, death threats and swattings. Employment and political prospects nil. Constant public harassment.
Almost everybody she asked, passed,
And then, there is the money, $250 a billable hour, 50% of what Lionel Hutt charges, and he’s not a competent lawyer.
Quinerly
@WaterGirl:
Totally agree with you.
TBone
@OzarkHillbilly: yup. Loser stink follows him even into the court room. It’s gonna be a long year, but especially for that loser. Each day, his life will be progressively worse than the day before. That’s my comfort in all of this.
TBone
@WaterGirl: as was pointed out by Simone this morning, she’s the only prosecutor to date who has made a J6 conspiracy criminal defendant plead GUILTY. I’m wearing my rose colored glasses today.
Paul in KY
@Jay: Gives some points on why she chose him. Thanks. I still think that she surely could have found another person (young up and comer, female maybe) to do the job.
If he was the only one, then I understand why he was chosen.
Jackie
@Jay: The MAGAts are already reacting to this decision as you described.
Willis’ main hurdle will be replacing Nate Wade with someone as capable and willing to accept the very real risks.
topclimber
Not to be too simple about this, but I think McAfee decided he was going to get even with Fani for the way she took over his courtroom during her testimony. At one point he told her (off camera) that she had to leave the courtroom because she was still steaming while he was conducting other business at his bench.
IANAL but our BJ attorneys can probably remember times a show-boating witness did themselves no good.
McAfee is making her sacrifice Wade because she can either fire him or fire him and the rest of her team as well.
bookdragon
I donated $25 to the Worker Power Team in AZ yesterday (late extra b-day present to a sister in AZ)
Jackie
@TBone: I’ll join you and put my rose colored glasses on, too! 😊
Frankensteinbeck
I am not at all on the ‘Willis should not have hired Wade’ boat. The message there is that a black woman was wrong for doing something a white man would not have batted an eye at. Even if you think it was predictable as a practical problem, forcing minorities to live a double standard because of that bothers me. It feels like being part of the problem.
TBone
@Jackie: 💙 it’s a nice way to go about today, remembering our victories and building upon them.
topclimber
Another question of the legal jackals:
If Willis appeals this decision, how likely is it that it will be stayed pending the appelate decision and can the case itself proceed in the interim?
Miss Bianca
@HumboldtBlue: the only thing that is going to move Johnson is the revelation of his porn stash. It’s certainly not going to be any concern for national security or democracy.
Miss Bianca
@Paul in KY: It sounds from what I have read that she *did* try to hire other prosecutors, but they faded on her because of the fear of EXACTLY WHAT JUST FUCKING HAPPENED, which is threats of harm from Trump, Trump’s lawyers, and Trumpistas in general.
@Jay: Or, you know, what you said.
lowtechcyclist
@Jay:
Can someone explain this part to me? That is, the insinuation that $250/hour is a pittance in the legal world.
$250/hour, if you work 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, is $500,000/year.
OK, we’re talking about billable hours. Suppose Wade’s working full-time for Willis (that’s been the case, right?), but only half of his hours are billable. That’s still $250K/year. Wouldn’t you have to be in the top ranks of your profession to be looking down your nose at that sort of money? (And my WAG is that if you’re working full-time for one client, you’re not going to have that many non-billable hours, but be that as it may.)
Denali5
@WaterGirl,
Off thread, but if you have any shareable information regarding Betty Cracker, it would be much appreciated. Guess no news is good news, but I still worry.
Hoodie
McAfee may have done her a favor if you concede that her starting a relationship with Wade was a boneheaded move to begin with. Yeah, it wasn’t a conflict but it sure was dumb. I got the sense that Willis had become annoyed with Wade anyway, particularly getting dragged into his stupid divorce case. This was a way for McAfee to slap her on the wrist and for Willis to shitcan Wade, because there’s no doubt that he’s the one to go. At least the case won’t be immediately killed by forcing her out. The other side will probably appeal to drag things out. However, they would have appealed if the judge did nothing, too.
Hoodie
@lowtechcyclist: That’s lower than the rate for a wet behind the ears associate at most midsize to large law firms. Partners at big firms routinely are well north of $500. The other thing is that rate also covers the lawyer’s overhead, so it’s not take home.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Kay, was wondering on your opinion on WTF happened with SDNY not giving those papers to Bragg’s office. I watched cable all night, trying to get an answer that didn’t make me go WTF?
bnateAZ
Trying to bite the tongue on this Fani Willis BS.
Donated to Worker Power in AZ because I need Joe to carry this crazy state again and for Kari Lake to be launched into the sun.
rikyrah
@WaterGirl:
Come sit by me, WG.
WaterGirl
@eclare:
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: Small consolation! But at least it was something.
rikyrah
@WaterGirl:
Does that mean that she’s up for election this November?
Lyrebird
@Another Scott: Yes, grrr… the AP iirc says oh yes must remove appearance of impropriety and does not mention anywhere I saw that Merchant – the attorney accusing DA Willis – is in a romantic relationship, and a marriage with quite possibly shared finances, with one of the other defendants’ lawyers!
At least the prosecution can go on.
topclimber
@lowtechcyclist: Word is that lawyers charge more when the case threatens their lives.
WaterGirl
@Quinerly: That still doesn’t excuse how badly Judge McAfee mishandled this case.
Jay
@lowtechcyclist:
Normal lawyer billable hours across the US are $500hr, and that’s for just a competent lawyer, and doesn’t include the retainer.
On top of that, you have the overhead fees, (office, staff, RA’s, Auditors, Private Dicks, etc).
Membership fees, filing fees, FOIA costs, etc.
And, it’s basically a “gig job”. Case by Case, Client by Client. If you have a steady stream, great, if not, feast and famine.
bbleh
Chipped in $25 yesterday
topclimber
@Jay: Back when I was faking a living as a consultant, the rule of thumb was an hourly rate three times higher than your expected income.
Grace
I donated $25 around midnight last night.
WaterGirl
@Denali5: Betty Cracker has not contacted the front-pagers group since her email a few days ago.
So I am assuming that they are figuring it out and that Betty is getting treatment.
Another Scott
Yeah, funny how that works.
:-/
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Jay
@topclimber:
yup.
Last job, one of the jobs, I fixed toxic gas monitors at a refinery.
They had a shop for me to work in, paid for the parts, had all the testing and diagnostic equiptment,
The Company billed them $125 an hour, our normal shop rate.
But the Company had no “overhead” involved, unlike in the shop.
My chunk of that was $20 an hour.
Worse than that, when MGMT changed, they doubled the billing. If it took an hour to fix something, we were required to bill 2 hours, and parts mark ups went to 90%.
Glad I quit.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: That’s definitely how I read it. My guess is that Fani Willis will get reelected.
Even little kids have an innate sense of what’s fair, and I’d like to think that a good number of adults do, too.
Fani Willis made an unwise choice in getting romantically involved with Wade, but a million elected people have surely had relationships that were unwise, but none of them have been publicly shamed in a way that even resembles this.
If I lived in GA, she would have my vote in a heartbeat. If the Rs get her scalp for this, it just hurts everyone going forward.
Denali5
@WaterGirl
Thanks for responding. She is in our thoughts.
wjca
Some interesting reactions here.
The subject has been discussed here for weeks now. We split between “she/they did nothing wrong; it’s bullshit” and “that wasn’t wrong, but it was a dumb thing to do.” It was a disagreement, but basically a civil disagreement.
But now a judge has said essentially the same as the latter group: “they made bad choices, but that isn’t grounds for removal.” And the folks in the former group go ballistic. Like now it’s obvious evidence of racism and/or sexism. Even though it didn’t seem to be previously. ,
WaterGirl
All of the donations listed in this thread have been recorded and are part of the match. By “recorded”, I mean that I list the comment number along with the donation amount. I only record name or nym for the raffles.
WaterGirl
@wjca:
I would say that we have been talking about racism and sexism since this whole story broke weeks or months ago. I would bet that we have had literally hundreds of comments on BJ about there being a different standard for black women in particular.
lowtechcyclist
@Hoodie:
That’s lower than the rate for a wet behind the ears associate at most midsize to large law firms. Partners at big firms routinely are well north of $500. The other thing is that rate also covers the lawyer’s overhead, so it’s not take home.
I’d expect the partners at the big firms, like whatever legal conglomerate what used to be Arnold & Porter got absorbed into, would be billing well into four figures per hour. But there are a shitload of lawyers out there. Hell, even the top ten or twenty percent of the profession is a shitload of lawyers. I’d expect that somewhere in there, they’d be down to more normal upper middle class professional sorts of income, is all.
Jay
@wjca:
the Judge has basically rules that:
6 of the charges need more evidence to support them.
There is no foul in the relationship, it just looks bad, but,
Don’t you know I am up for re-election!
eclare
@WaterGirl:
Fulton County is very evenly divided between White and Black, less than 1% difference. I was wondering so I checked this morning. It is an unusual county in that it includes the city of Atlanta and some suburbs to the south that are predominantly Black but it also extends north into some very, very wealthy White areas (eg, Alpharetta). I left ATL in 2004 but my guess is that this is going to be a very close election.
geg6
I urge you all to not do the stupid thing I did just now, which was to read the comments at LGM regarding this. The racism and misogyny meter is off the charts.
Decayingviolets
I donated $100 yesterday to Worker Power.
WaterGirl
Interesting take from (fake) Jack Smith:
lowtechcyclist
@Jay:
Overhead? I was a paralegal 45 years ago, and practically everything I did would be a few keystrokes away now. And who needs a secretary anymore? And those walls full of law books are presumably all online now too. Can’t see why a lawyer couldn’t work from home just as easily as I could when I was a government statistician.
Wouldn’t you charge the client for filing fees, FOIA request, private detectives, and the like?
The point about gig work is well taken, but I’m thinking having a research assistant (that was what RA meant, right?) is the sort of person you employ because you don’t have enough time to do the research yourself. If you don’t have close to a full-time stream of work coming in, how does it make sense to have the RA?
And at a more fundamental level, if lawyers have this feast-and-famine existence, with times of being busy and other times when they have time heavy on their hands, shouldn’t the laws of supply and demand push everyone’s rates down proportionately?
Nah, still can’t get my head around it.
Citizen Alan
@Another Scott:
One of my former Legal employers Had an undergraduate degree in history and wrote his l.L.M thesis on antebellum slave law and the effects it had on judicial policy nationwide. Mississippi has an elected judiciary today because in the 1830s and 40s, the previous and highly respected appointed judiciary was issuing too many opinions that were effectively pro slave rights. That is, beneficial to slaves, including a highly controversial decision that if a slave owner had any defects to his title of ownership in a slave, that slave would become a free man. That opinion almost single-handedly led to the Mississippi constitution of 1840, which created an elected Judiciary at every level. I assume something similar happened in alabama.
SiubhanDuinne
@MazeDancer:
Who is/was his father? Andrew’s Wikipedia entry doesn’t say.
Barbara
The deluge of motions to disqualify that a different result would have unleashed would have upended Georgia’s criminal justice system. For those who think the judge’s opinion was unnecessarily harsh to Willis, this could be the kind of opinion that is stronger because it assumes that every scurrilous allegation is true and concludes that IT STILL DOESN’T MATTER. He’s not basing his decision just on his findings of fact — in other words, don’t come back with more or different allegations to see if that does the trick. Just go away.
Paul in KY
@Frankensteinbeck: It’s a ‘prosecuting fucking TFG problem’, IMO.
Paul in KY
@Miss Bianca: ‘Hot Mormon Boys’ or something like that, probably.
Paul in KY
@topclimber: Very good point.
MazeDancer
@SiubhanDuinne: Gerald Weissmann, MD, made the pioneering discoveries of cellular actions, that, basically, invented the field of Rheumatology.
Andrew’s sister, Lisa, is also a doctor.
Here’s a tribute at NIH, when Dr. Weissmann died.
Citizen Alan
@Soprano2: You think that’s bad? Mississippi has elected coroners! No medical training or even a college degree is required.
WaterGirl
@Barbara: Interesting way of looking at it.
Are you the Barbara that is an attorney? I get confused because we have attorney Barbara, and there is a nym whose name is actually Barbara.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: The high heels with the axe gif is a nice touch. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Barbara
@WaterGirl: I am an attorney. I don’t know what standard the judge had to apply here, but I would guess that it was a finding of a conflict of interest that would prejudice the ability of the defendant to obtain a fair trial. When the two people who are alleged to have a conflict are on the same side of the prosecution, and don’t represent different parties (e.g., co-defendants) I don’t understand how as a matter of law there could be a conflict. But I guess the judge decided that it would forestall the potential for continuing disruption and innuendo during the course of the trial to hold a hearing on the issue anyway.
All I am saying is that it sounds like the judge brought the hammer down on defendant’s theory and made it clear it wasn’t because he was a friend of the prosecutor or generally a big fan of whatever it is she is alleged to have done. It’s because the defendants don’t have a case.
Betty
@Shalimar: Very disappointing. Hard to believe his election campaign isn’t influencing his behavior.
neldob
I donated yesterday evening.
ewrunning
I gave $25 first thing this a.m.
WaterGirl
@Barbara: Good to hear your take on this, thank you.
WaterGirl
@neldob: @ewrunning: Thank you!
We are $25 away from meeting frosty’s match, and starting the next one.
WaterGirl
Wade has resigned, and Fani Willis has accepted his resignation.
Misunderstanding
@Shalimar: so they lie their ass’s off enrich themselves yet are rewarded with the continuation of their case, because macfee is worried about someone being propped up to running against him? I’m not trying to be controversial here I’m just asking a question?
Quinerly
@WaterGirl: didn’t say it did. I was referencing her poor judgment.
WaterGirl
@Quinerly: I was not intending that as a rebuttal to anything you had said – I was just following up on our previous exchange with a further thought.
Sorry I wasn’t clear.