Retired Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz said Tuesday that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be on trial for some of the “worst crimes” that he’s seen prosecutors commit and called for the appointment of an independent prosecutor to lead a criminal investigation into her actions.
There have also been allegations that Ms. Willis tampered with a witness by discouraging testimony.
President Trump and over a dozen other co-defendants have been charged for allegedly seeking to illegally overturn the 2020 presidential election in Fulton County. The former president has pleaded not guilty, calling the case an underhanded attempt to thwart his 2024 comeback bid.
In January, a co-defendant of President Trump accused Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade of being in a secret relationship in which they both allegedly profited.
The pair denied any financial benefit from the relationship, while insisting they didn’t begin dating until after Mr. Wade became special prosecutor and that they broke up in the summer of 2023. While they both said that Ms. Willis either paid for things herself or used cash to reimburse him for travel expenses, they did not provide any records or receipts to back up the repayment claim.
“When you admit that you paid for all these trips on your credit cards, then the burden of proof shifts to the other side to demonstrate that there was payback in cash,” he said in mid-February.
More Evidence
There’s also witness testimony pointing to possible perjury on the part of Ms. Willis.Robin Yeartie, a former friend and co-worker of Ms. Willis, testified on Feb. 15 that she saw the two hugging and kissing long before Mr. Wade was hired in November 2021.
While Mr. Dershowitz didn’t specify what technical scientific evidence of perjury he had in mind, cell phone location data brought up in court points in that direction.
Defense attorneys submitted an affidavit from investigator Charles Mittelstadt that analyzed Mr. Wade’s cellphone data showing that he had texted and called Ms. Willis thousands of times months before he was hired in November 2021. The data also allegedly showed that he visited the neighborhood where Ms. Willis had lived numerous times in the same time period.
Still, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee ruled there wasn’t enough evidence to back claims that Ms. Willis benefitted financially from Mr. Wade’s appointment, although he did describe their relationship as a “tremendous lapse in judgment.”
‘Open and Shut Case of Perjury’
President Trump and several codefendants appealed Judge McAfee’s decision not to disqualify Ms. Willis, arguing in a court filing that there was “damning evidence” of a “significant appearance of impropriety” that the judge’s decision failed to rectify.In his Tuesday interview on Newsmax, Mr. Dershowitz lent credence to this view, arguing that not only should Ms. Willis be disqualified but she should also face a criminal investigation.
“Essentially she got kickbacks for appointing this highly unqualified person to head the prosecution,” Mr. Dershowitz told the outlet.
“I sure hope the appellate court takes the case and throws her out of the case and recommends that there be a criminal investigation,” he continued, adding, “we have to have an independent prosecutor of some kind looking into what is an open and shut case of perjury.”
The Fulton County DA’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the legal scholar’s remarks.
Ms. Willis told CNN that her office has continued to work on the case throughout the disqualification hearings, calling the various allegations against her a delay tactic.
“While that was going on, we were writing responsive briefs, we were still doing the case in a way that it needed to be done. I don’t feel like we’ve been slowed down at all. I do think there are efforts to slow down this train, but the train is coming,” she told the outlet.
