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I wonder whether Fani Willis regrets yet her fateful decision to indict one of the most popular Presidents in American history under a thin, creative legal theory. True, she may have been encouraged — if not put up to it — by some covert and highly-illegal White House dirty tricks squad. But clearly, the luckless DA failed to comprehend the political nuclear weapon she detonated in her own back yard, right next to the broken refrigerator and that old truck up on cement blocks.

Yesterday I reported the curious timing of Judge MaCafee’s new election challenger. Well, apparently two can play at that game. Yesterday, Atlanta News First delivered more bad news for DA Willis in a story headlined, “Two candidates announce run against Fani Willis for Fulton County district attorney seat.”

As the headline reported, not one but two candidates for Fani’s job filed qualification papers this week. The first was Republican Courtney Kramer, a lawyer for one of the Trump defendants. In the linked clip, Courtney hinted that, if Judge MaCafee does disqualify Fani, no other district attorney at the Fulton County DA’s office is crazy enough to take on the Trump case. She also reported that bar complaints have now been filed against Fani and Nathan, which could be another devastating development for the embattled DA...

For any lawyer, even a groundless, spiteful, nonsensical bar complaint is a burden. Since the lawyer could conceivably wind up losing their license, all complaints must all be taken seriously, even if the complaint is no more than a handwritten rant. Dealing with nuisance bar complaints still takes up valuable time — nothing to be done about it — and heaps up unavoidable anxiety until the complaint is successfully resolved.

And that’s just for meritless complaints. A meritorious bar complaint is a thousand times more stressful, time consuming, and dangerous. Fani and Nathan’s bar complaints are probably in this second category. So.

But that’s not all. This week, another attorney filed to run against Fani, democrat Christian Wise Smith, who ran against her in 2020’s district attorney race. He seems like a nice enough fellow.

So you might say the original Fani Willis cancer — a cancer tentacling throughout Georgia’s political system — has reached stage four and is now metastasizing. Just look at where we are: a nail-biting countdown to Judge MaCafee’s decision, which will only be the beginning of that litigation, new witnesses and evidence popping up and leaking all over the place, an Ethics Commission just getting its legs under it, bar complaints, new candidates challenging the judge and the district attorney, and who knows what else going on behind the scenes in Georgia as the political players sharpen their long knives to a razors edge.

Another way to look at it is, the blood is in the water now, and a frantic school of starving sharks is swimming circles around Fani Willis’s sinking political life raft.

As I’ve said before, everyone involved in this thing — even Biden’s political dirty tricks squad — are off the map. Nobody has ever persecuted a former president (or a presidential candidate) this way before, so nobody knows how things could play out. They are playing with unstable political dynamite.

A bombshell new congressional report has been published that shows Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis secretly colluded with the Democrats’ “Jan. 6” Committee to fabricate a narrative against President Donald Trump and destroy exonerating evidence before Republicans could review it.

The “January 6 Initial Findings Report” was published by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) on Monday.

Loudermilk is the chairman of the Committee on House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight.

“For nearly two years, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s January 6th Select Committee promoted hearsay and cherry-picked information to promote its political goal – to legislatively prosecute former President Donald Trump,” Chairman Loudermilk said in a statement on Monday.

Over the weekend, commenters continued poking me about Judge McAfee’s connections to Fani Willis, implying they show some kind of secret bias that should change my mind about what’s really going on in the case. So I looked into the claims. The first claim is that McAfee and his wife each donated $150 ($300 total) to Fani Willis’ 2020 District Attorney campaign. The second claim is that McAfee once briefly worked for Fani Willis at the Fulton County DA’s office. Both claims are true.

For background, I relied on an article published last August in the New York Times under the headline, Judge on Trump Case Once Worked Under Fani Willis.

First, as to the donation. In 2020, Fulton County voters were forced to choose between two democrats running for District Attorney. Fani Willis ran against an ultra-liberal incumbent, democrat Paul Howard, and it was no secret that local conservatives supported Willis. Some of our own C&Cers from Atlanta even reported voting for her in the comments. Given that, plus the fact they briefly worked together (more on that in a minute), it’s unremarkable that McAfee made a relatively small donation to Fani’s campaign.

The rest of McAfee’s slim voting record appears to favor Republican candidates.

On the plus side, Judge McAfee’s resume offers plenty of encouraging conservative bona fides. McAfee, 35, graduated law school relatively recently in 2013. While attending the University of Georgia, he was vice president of the Federalist Society’s local chapter. The Federalist Society is a solidly conservative law group (I am also a member). McAfee also was the Law School Republicans’ treasurer.

McAfee’s career could be called meteoric, exactly what you’d hope to see from a skilled and intelligent jurist. Keep in mind, this part of his resume is all in his ten-years post-graduate. According to the Times, McAfee’s very first job out of law school was in the Fulton County DA’s office, where he was briefly assigned to Fani Willis’ felony team. But he was quickly promoted out of Willis’ office to the complex trial division. Then he was promoted again, to senior assistant district attorney, where he prosecuted murder cases in the major case division.

In 2019 — only six years out of law school — McAfee was appointed to assistant U.S. attorney for the entire Northern District of Georgia, and prosecuted federal cases like bank fraud and drug trafficking. In March 2021, Governor Kemp appointed McAfee to lead the state’s Office of the Inspector General, an internal watchdog agency investigating fraud, abuse and mismanagement in government. It’s likely he worked with the Governor in that politically-sensitive job.

He was Inspector General when was appointed last year to Fulton County judge, showing Governor Kemp must have liked the job McAfee did as IG. Kemp appointed him into an open judicial slot, making McAfee the youngest judge in Fulton County.

After all that, no, I do not think that Judge McAfee is secretly working for Fani Willis and playing 5-D chess instead of 4-D chess. His small $300 donation in an all-blue local election — to someone he knew — makes sense. True, McAfee’s very first job as a 24-year-old law school graduate was in Fani Willis’ office, but he shot right out of there to much more important, high-profile, and politically-sensitive positions.

The bottom line is: not only is Judge McAfee smart, experienced beyond his years, and well-connected, but from his resume he is not just conservative but also very politically savvy. It’s now even more clear why he was a great choice for Trump in this case, maybe the best possible choice among the Fulton County judges.

Remember, Trump could easily have drawn some all-in liberal judge instead. Sometimes, and I am not talking about anyone in particular, but sometimes some Republicans can be guilty of being impossible to satisfy and suspicious of everyone. I’m just saying.

Only conservative media reported this big news yesterday. Fox ran its Love Bunny story headlined, “Nathan Wade admitted to multiple White House meetings during Trump Georgia probe, transcript suggests.”

Remember Nathan Wade? He’s the Atlanta lawyer who ‘worked’ under Fulton County’s Trump-prosecuting State Attorney Fani Willis. He earned every dollar, too. Anyway, yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee questioned Nathan in a close-door session, so we only have the transcript of what happened (no video).

For one thing, Nathan admitted that when Fani hired him to lead the Trump RICO case, he’d never had a RICO case before. He had to take an online class to learn what it was all about. Because when prosecuting the previous President of the United States, they wanted a first-timer leading the case. Of course they did.

Next, Wade also admitted he met with White House lawyers at least twice, once for a full-day meeting, to discuss the Trump prosecution. Of course, we already knew that much, since Wade, who is no black Albert Einstein, billed Fulton County for those meetings which he clearly identified on his bills, and the invoices are now Georgia public records.

If the Judiciary Committee hoped to fill in some gaps by asking Nathan questions nicely, it must have been disappointed. From his answers on the transcript, Nathan decided to go with amnesia. He remembers nothing about any White House lawyers. He can’t recall who he met with. He doesn’t remember where the meeting was. He has no idea what they talked about.

Nathan admitted he can see the meetings listed on his invoices, right there, but that’s it. Apart from that, he’s drawing a blank. Coming up empty. Zip, zero, zilch, nada.

Before you jump to conclusions, I think it’s possible. It’s not like Nathan started off as some kind of mental giant or anything. And I mean, look what poor Nathan has been through. Just imagine the sordid acts of self-humiliation the man was forced to undertake to score a ‘G’ or two off Fani. He probably has PTSD, which can interfere with people’s memory.

Yesterday, the New York Times ran a story simply headlined, “Fani Willis Loses Bid to Continue Prosecuting Georgia Trump Case.” The sub-headline snarkily explained the significance: “the criminal case against President Trump, related to his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, will not move forward anytime soon, if ever.” Womp, womp.

Yesterday, Georgia’s Supreme Court “dealt another blow to the moribund election interference case against President Trump,” after it declined to hear an appeal from a lower appellate court ruling that had disqualified the lovelorn and equally moribund Fani T. Willis, Fulton County’s plump prosecutor, from pursuing the case.

Democrats had all but given up hope over this lingering bit of lawfare, but there was still a tiny scrap of possibility. But as of yesterday, that tiny scrap of hope has been chewed, digested, and rudely evacuated.

Yesterday, the New York Times ran a tremendous story headlined, “Justice Department Scrutinizes a Trip Fani Willis Took to the Bahamas.” It was as grotesque a bit of journalistic malpractice-slash-prebunking we’ve seen in a long time, and all for what? Trying to save the Love Bunny? But it’s still a fun and encouraging morality tale of how to combine business with pleasure, or vice-versa. ...

Fani’s romantic side interests eventually got her tossed off the case, which the Times reluctantly conceded remains “in limbo.”

Which was funny, because there was also probably a lot of limbo at the so-called Bahamas “leadership conference” mentioned in the subpoena. ...

Willis, the Times reported, enjoyed the Bahamas training trip along with “some colleagues” last November, after her most recent re-election.

A few paragraphs later, the story quietly explained that the “some colleagues” who went on the “training trip” was Fani’s “chief investigator.” They didn’t name the industrious gentleman, but the office website revealed that would be one Richard Randolph, who Fani had just promoted to the position and who also remarkably resembles Fani’s previous love cushion, Nathan Wade...

Nathan probably thought he was irreplaceable, but Nathan’s hot dogs come in packs of a dozen. One wonders how much of New Nathan’s, I mean Mr. Randolph’s, island “leadership training” included office services above and beyond the ordinary call of duty. (One shudders in dread even thinking about it.) Susan Ryan, one of the training company’s owners, called the seminar “very intensive”— for Randolph, perhaps kind of like what the Abu Ghraib prisoners experienced, but with Rum Punch. ...

Times readers were left with the lasting impression that brave Fani was bravely leading the battle against Trump racketeering, from an all-inclusive resort, building morale with her male subordinate(s), and earning Continuing Lounge Education (CLE) at the same time. Win-win. ...

The real story, intentionally lost in the conga line and buried under the buffet, was the subpoena and the DOJ’s obvious continuing investigation. They’re probing Fani hard (that’s what she said) and they’re leaving no junket unturned. And if things were going well for Fani, there’d be no need for any prophylactic.

Well, except for Randoph. It might be a good idea if he took an antibiotic or something.

Yesterday, CBS News ran a very entertaining story headlined, “Fulton County DA Fani Willis clashes with Georgia Senate committee over Trump prosecution.” The Senators confronted Ms. Willis with bills she authorized for her personal boy toy and squeeze Nathan Wade, who invoiced 160 hours of work per week, or around 23 hours per day. ...

The context is that Willis’s case against President Trump is now dismissed, her own fault for mixing business with pleasure, but she remains under the microscope, like bacteria collected from patient zero. The DA remains defiant. She has partial amnesia. She said that she couldn’t remember whether the House J6 committee sent her any documents or helped her with the case. ...

She even tried to defend approving Wade’s obviously fake invoices. “She allowed Wade to bill 160 hours a week,” CBS reported, “while he taught the other attorneys assigned to the case how to prosecute and investigate it.” ...

The hearing was a circus. You can almost hear calliope music playing behind the proceedings, with Willis repeatedly having her microphone cut off when she kept talking over the Senators in a furious, machine-gun speaking style with an urban patois. That may be unkind; there are certainly moments when listening to the beleaguered DA’s rhetorical skills conjures the mellifluous tones of a feral screech owl.

Where this all goes next is anybody’s guess. Anything remains possible. If the Senators develop the evidence properly, then Georgia’s Governor could remove Ms. Willis. She might face criminal or civil charges, bar discipline, or land a role on next season’s Bachelor.