Fanni Willis 2028 https://t.co/UgKzrHgEs3 — John Cole (@Johngcole) February 15, 2024 I really want to thank The GOP for giving black women voters 9 whole months to plot revenge all over The United States. Thank you for your service. — Sons of Killmonger & Disciple of Dark Brandon (@2Strong2Silence) February 16, 2024 USA Today headlined …
Repub Venality Open Thread: Fani Willis EditionPost + Comments (106)
Willis’s testimony followed that of Wade, with whom she’s had a romantic relationship — a relationship that sparked these court proceedings. One of the issues at the heart of whether she should be removed from the case is whether she benefited financially from having appointed Wade to it. And so much of the day’s questioning focused on whether Wade footed the bill for plane tickets and cruises to places such as Belize, Aruba and Napa Valley. Wade explained that the two split costs, with Willis paying him back in cash — thousands of dollars in cash. At a time when many businesses only accept electronic payments and many people never carry cash, Wade made a mess of explaining why Willis was handing over wads of untraceable dollars. He began many sentences with, “Here’s the thing …” And by the time he reached the end of the sentence, well, there was no “thing” there…
Willis lectured the gathered attorneys on the philosophy behind keeping cash on hand. Her father taught her that cash was king and a woman should always be financially self-reliant. And so, yes, she had a stash of cash accumulated over time and she used it to reimburse Wade. She dipped into it before a trip so she could pay taxi drivers or barter with vendors. Her description of her father’s advice was a compressed version of a complicated history and modern-day habit. She didn’t go into the discomfort that some Black people have with financial institutions or the ways in which banks have made it more difficult for Black people to do business with them. She didn’t mention that more older people believe in keeping ready cash and that a significant percentage of Black and Hispanic Americans use cash as their predominant payment method. She didn’t have to. She simply talked about what her father had told her to do as a matter of independence and power. “I don’t need any man to foot my bills,” Willis said…
So after two whole days of testimony there is ZERO evidence that Fani Willis has a conflict of interest. Mr. Bradley on the other hand seems to have perjured himself and ruined his legal career.
— Candidly Tiff (@tify330) February 16, 2024
Fani Willis’ testimony evokes long-standing frustrations for Black women leaders https://t.co/7NmNg5t4af
— The Associated Press (@AP) February 17, 2024
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is used to prosecuting high-profile, challenging cases. But as she parried questions about her own personal conduct from the witness stand against the legal teams for defendants her office has accused of election interference, many Black women recognized a dispiriting scene.
“It absolutely feels familiar. There is no secret that the common sentiment among Black women in positions of power (is that they) must over-perform to be seen as equals to their counterparts,” said Jessica T. Ornsby, a family litigation attorney in the Washington, D.C., area.
“Here, Ms. Willis is being scrutinized for things that are not directly related to her job performance, in ways we see other Black women regularly picked apart,” Ornsby said…
DA Fani Willis’ dad Mr. Floyd having to explain that keeping cash is a “Black thing” is peak Black History Month. This was a really effective moment bolstering Fani’s explanation. pic.twitter.com/fCZop0ff3K
— Reecie @BlackWomenViews (@ReecieColbert) February 16, 2024
Once again, the Washington Post — “The life and testimony of Fani Willis’s father, John Floyd III” [gift link]:
A month after Fani Willis was sworn in as the first Black female district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., in 2021, her father said protesters arrived outside her house at 5 a.m. John Floyd III recalled that he “hadn’t seen anything exactly like it, before and after that happened.”
“There were people outside her house cursing and yelling and calling her the b-word and the n-word. And just — it was bizarre,” Floyd testified in an Atlanta-area courthouse Friday morning.
Five days after that incident, Willis announced a criminal investigation into whether former president Donald Trump conspired to try to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results, setting off a chain of events that somehow had landed Floyd on the witness stand on Feb. 16, as part of an evidentiary hearing over misconduct claims against his only child…
Many watching the hearing online commented on details Floyd shared of his personal history. His youth was defined by the civil rights movement, which he said took him from Alabama back to his home in South Central Los Angeles, where he joined the Black Power movement. (As a young organizer, one of the projects Floyd had hoped to complete was setting up a credit union for his community, Floyd recently told California State University’s Tom and Ethel Bradley Center.)
After two fellow Black Panthers were fatally shot at a Black Student Union meeting, Floyd turned to law, enrolling at UCLA, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, though he remained active in human rights campaigns — on the stand, he mentioned he had worked for Nelson Mandela and the campaign to free him from prison.
Floyd also spoke about how, as a criminal defense attorney, he had litigated “probably … a thousand cases” all over the country, though he spent most of his legal career in Washington. He was part of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, he added, and had hoped to live the rest of his life in South Africa, but had to return to the United States “for political reasons.” A film buff, Floyd now lives in L.A., where he is working on a documentary, he told the court.
Floyd also described his increasing fears for his daughter’s safety as threats mounted against her in the wake of becoming the most powerful prosecutor in the most populous county in Georgia…
This is still not true: Willis said she took money out of her retirement to help fund her first judicial campaign (her campaign finance report shows loans, too)
(Willis and Wade also independently of each other testified the start/end times of their relationship in 2022/2023) pic.twitter.com/WniwyMx4AL— stephen fowler (@stphnfwlr) February 16, 2024
So Fani Willis TRIED to hire other lawyers to be the special prosecutor and they turned the job down. Doesn’t sound like someone who was trying to use the case to enrich themselves. https://t.co/6w4Fs6xTGR
— chris evans (@notcapnamerica) February 16, 2024
Can we get Clarence Thomas in court & ask him if he’s ever had sex with Harlan Crow? https://t.co/WucJYn2IM1
— Michelle (@Eaglefly124) February 16, 2024