It Looks Like The Whole Fulton County Case Was A Grift

As pieces of the puzzle straggle in, I was impressed by the juxtaposition of Nathan Wade's non-report report on the Cobb County jail death scandal from 2020 with what we now know about the timeline of his relationship with Fani Willis. As I linked yesterday,

When Wade finished his investigation later that year, he released no formal public report about what led to the deaths at the notoriously dangerous lock-up.

Asked about his findings for a local TV news investigation, Wade conceded that he created no “documents, communications, or records memorializing, reflecting evidence, or relating to the work,” according to the news station, 11Alive.

“I have obviously my brainchild, what’s going on in my mind about it. That’s what I have,” Wade told a lawyer for 11Alive who was trying to obtain Sheriff’s Department internal records about the probe through public records act requests. That outcome was condemned by local criminal justice reform activists and defense attorneys, some of whom said Wade’s investigation helped the Sheriff’s Department use the pretense of an ongoing investigation to deny public access to potentially embarrassing records.

The link said Wade was engaged to pretend to do a report in June 2020 and finished not writing it some months later. We don't know how much he was paid, nor exactly when he finished, but it's worth noting that by November of that year, he was working with Fani's transition team following her election as Fulton County DA. We do know, as I linked yesterday, that following Ms Willis's taking over the DA's office on January 1, 2021, Wade's law partners got contracts from her office, Christopher Campbell at $150 per hour starting that month and Terrence Bradley for $74,480 over the course of the year. In March and April, Campbell had an additional contract for $65 an hour.

It appears that Wade and Willis were attempting to keep their relationship secret, especially during this period, although Wade's presence and influence in the office was well known to the workers there. Although Willis didn't give Wade any direct contract, the contracts to his partners would have entitled Wade to a third of their billing under their partnership agreement. Thus, at least from January 2021, Wade was receiving indirect payments from Willis, although accounts of his role in the office suggest Wade was the individual who actually selected his partners for the contracts.

In April 2021, Willis moved into Robin Yeartie's condo in Hapeville, which appears to have been used to maintain the secrecy of her relationship with Wade. The Mittelstadt affadavit reported 35 assignations between Willis and Wade at this condo before November of 2021.

It seems to me that what we're seeing is a relationship based on secrecy that embraced not just sex but money, pretty much from the start, and at least from June of 2020, Wade had established himself as a grifter who was collecting fees for not doing things. By the time the Cobb County grift ran out, he had apparently become fully involved with Willis, who by implication in her testimony on February 15 was broke after spending $50,000 on an election she lost. Wade was not only going to keep her warm at night, he was going to make her rich again.

The record shows that Willis was routing cash to Wade before he was named special prosecutor, but once the budget became available for the RICO election interference case, they started riding the gravy train. The question I've had for some time is how this plum landed in Fulton County onto the laps of Willis and Wade -- yes, the White House was pursuing a lawfare strategy against Trump in general, but with so many opportunities at the federal, state, and local levels, why Fulton County in particular?

A Breitbart story from yesterday gives at least a clue:

The Biden administration planted a Democrat operative inside a Fulton County office to target former President Donald Trump, multiple sources familiar with the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office exclusively told Breitbart News.

. . . One significant figure is overlooked in the Fulton County scandal concerning Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis and her alleged lover and fellow prosecutor Nathan Wade, the sources said: Meet Jeff DiSantis — the county’s Deputy District Attorney with professional experience far greater than the average county employee. DiSantis worked on Willis’s 2020 campaign, sources told Breitbart News, and was the former Executive Director of the Democrat Party of Georgia with extensive knowledge of campaign finance law.

. . . Sources credit DiSantis with colluding with the White House to target Trump. “DiSantis did this,” one source told Breitbart News about the Trump case. “He’s the one. He is the one pulling all the strings. He was the one that walled her [Willis] off. He was in every important meeting. He is the brainchild behind this. That is the connection to the White House.”

. . . Sources also revealed that DiSantis was a member of Willis’s transition team after she won the election in November 2020. DiSantis helped Wade select employees for the new office. “DiSantis was there in the capacity to be a political strategist, hiding in the DA’s office,” a source told Breitbart News.

But here's the problem. Wade already appears to have been the kind of guy who'd bill for doing nothing, while one frequent observation about Willis, given her performance on February 15, is that she isn't very smart. More than one commentator has asked why Trump would want to remove Willis as prosecutor if she's as incompetent as she now seems. What on earth was the White House expecting to get from this team? They weren't going to work very hard, and they weren't going to work very smart, but they sure were going to bill for their services, and that's exactly what they did.

The most I can think is that the White House was aiming for quick indictments and then convictions before the 2024 election in politically reliable jurisdictions, and if the convictions were overturned later, it would be after the election when it didn't matter. If so, it wouldn't matter if the prosecutors were corrupt and incompetent.

That was at best a miscalculation.