Day 1

The evidentiary hearing on the ethical conflicts between Fulton County DA Fani Willis and her lead prosecutor is turning out to be the best TV since Watergate. Fani Willis is comparable to combative figures like John Ehrlichman, Charles Colson, or Jeb Stuart Magruder. Nathan Wade, whose habitual expressions all involve something sheepish, is a clown equivalent to G Gordon Liddy.

A lot of Fox commentators have focused on Judge McAfee indulging Willis, but some YouTubers like Robert Gouveia and Viva Frei think Ashleigh Merchant has deliberately been setting Ms Willis up to go on embarrassing, rambling, often hysterical rants. And if this is deliberate, the judge is effectively enabling it.

So far, the case reinforces my impression of the astonishing incompetence of the people behind the White House lawfare stratagy. One of the obvious questions to come out of yestefday's testimony was how Willis and Wade could manage trial preparations if they took five vacations in six months. Another was the cavalier estmates of what these vacations cost -- each cruise or trip to someplace like Napa, CA amounted to charges of less than $2000 on Wade's part, with Willis testifying she'd reimbursed Wade in cash amounts from $500 to $2500.

But this goes to the complete absence of receipts, with other testimony that's simply hard to believe, such as Willis's insistence that she doesn't use checks. Does she pay her mortgage in cash? Her car insurance? Het utilities?

But round trip air fare, for instance from Atlanta to Sacramento, which is the closest airport for Napa, is at least $200 per person. Hotels are at least $300 per night. Wine tasting tours, of which Willis testified they took three, are at least $100 per person. Meals, airport limo, and other incidentals are probably $100-$300 per person per day. We don't know how many days they stayed, but an estimate of $2000 for the two of them on such a trip seems unreasonably low, especially considering the likelihood that they preferred higher-level accommodations.

So the show is ongoing, we'll have to see how things shake out. The current prognostication seems to be that she will be disqualified as prosecutor, but there are other estimates that both she and Wade could find themselves in tax difficulties as well.