Constitutional Crisis

In light of Dean Phillips's truth-telling blurt that I talked about yesterday, Special Counsel Hur's remarks on Joe's mental state in his report on Biden's handling of classified documents suggests Washington insiders have been concealing a crisis for some time. In fact, it's beginning to shape up as a full-blown constitutional crisis.

The closest parallel I can think of is the crisis in the UK over Edward VIII's wish to marry Wallis Simpson, which came to a head throughout 1936. According to Wikipedia,

It is generally accepted that Wallis Simpson and Edward became lovers in 1934, while Lady Furness (who was also in a relationship with the prince) was visiting relatives in the United States. However, Edward adamantly insisted to his father, King George V, that he was not physically intimate with Simpson and that it was inappropriate to describe her as his mistress. . . . Edward and Simpson were secretly followed by members of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch, who produced reports on the nature of their relationship and their investigations into Wallis Simpson's private life that included the "pursuit of vicious gossip" and the identification of a "secret lover". The prospect of having an American divorcée with a questionable past having such sway over the heir apparent led to anxiety among government and establishment figures.

In the summer of [1936], the King eschewed the traditional prolonged stay at Balmoral in favour of a holiday with Simpson in the eastern Mediterranean that was widely covered in the American and continental European press, but not by the British press, which maintained a self-imposed silence. Nevertheless, Canadians and expatriate Britons, who had access to the foreign reports, were largely scandalised by the coverage.

By October, it was rumoured in high society and abroad that Edward intended to marry Simpson as soon as she was free to do so. At the end of that month, the crisis came to a head when she filed for divorce and the American press announced that marriage between her and the King was imminent. The King's private secretary, Alec Hardinge, wrote to him on 13 November, warning: "The silence in the British Press on the subject of Your Majesty's friendship with Mrs Simpson is not going to be maintained ... Judging by the letters from British subjects living in foreign countries where the Press has been outspoken, the effect will be calamitous."

In other words, the UK press kept the whole issue quiet, despite it being general knowledge among the elites and widely reported in the foreign press. Back to Wikipedia,

[T]he British press remained quiet on the subject until Alfred Blunt, Bishop of Bradford, gave a speech to his diocesan conference on 1 December, which alluded to the King's need of divine grace: "We hope that he is aware of his need. Some of us wish that he gave more positive signs of his awareness." The press took this for the first public comment by a notable person on the crisis and it became front-page news on 3 December. When asked about it later, however, the bishop claimed he had not heard of Simpson at the time he wrote the speech, and that it was an expression of disappointment at the King's conspicuous failure to attend church services regularly [cough, cough]. Acting on the advice of Edward's staff, Simpson left Britain for the south of France two days later in an attempt to escape intense press attention.

Events unrolled quickly thereafter, with Edward abdicating a week afer Simpson's departure, on December 10. If nothing else, this is an indication of how important it was for the establishment to keep the secret, and how quickly the crisis had to be solved when it was revealed. The combination of Rep Phillips, a Democrat stalwart, tweeting, "But shame on all of you pretending everything is ok. You are leading us - and him - into a disaster, and you damn well know it," followed two days later by the revelations in the Hur report, strikes me as very close to the bishop's invocation of Edward's need for divine grace -- both seem to have blown the lid off the secret.

At this point, the reaction in the establishment press has been stunned silence. YouTube seems to be throttling comments on the issue as well. Only on the right, at least so far, have we been getting intelligent assessments of what these revelations mean. For instance, at Front Page Magazine:

If there are any two things that a man ought to remember, it’s when his son died and when he ascended to the vice presidency and when he became a private citizen again.

Now a man so far gone that he does not know either one has his finger on the nuclear button.

There have been many defenses of Biden’s state made in the past. We have been told that he misspeaks because he has a problem with stuttering or that he’s prone to making up stories, but neither one explains the sheer scale and persistence of the problem which extends well beyond confusing deceased former German chancellor Helmut Kohl and former chancellor Angela Merkel or former French president François Mitterrand and Emmanuel Macron, the sitting president, as he did this week, which might be understandable if that was all there was to it.

Biden is forgetting things that no normal person in their right state of mind loses track of.

Republican Rep Rep. Claudia Tenney wrote to Attorney General Garland, arguing in part,

“It is incumbent upon you to explore proceedings to remove the President pursuant to the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution,” she wrote. “President Biden needs to be charged, or he needs to be removed. There is no middle ground.”

NBC reported,

The Hur report strips away the defenses that Biden’s press operation has used to protect him and raises fresh doubts about whether Biden is up to the rigors of the presidency, Democratic strategists said in interviews.

“This is beyond devastating,” said another Democratic operative, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk candidly about Biden’s shortcomings. “It confirms every doubt and concern that voters have. If the only reason they didn’t charge him is because he’s too old to be charged, then how can he be president of the United States?”

Asked if Hur’s report changes the calculus for Democrats who expect Biden to be the party’s nominee, this person said: “How the f--- does it not?”

Another Biden ally called it “the worst day of his presidency.”

Speaker Johnson remarked after Joe's impromptu press conference,

"The President’s press conference this evening further confirmed on live television what the Special Counsel report outlined. He is not fit to be President," House Speaker Mike Johnson declared in response to the episode. The Speaker of the House is third in line for the presidency, positioned only behind the vice president in the order of precedence.

It's hard to avoid thinking this is a constitutional crisis on the order of the one in the UK over Edward VIII. My current estimate is that it will hasten Joe's withdrawal from the 2024 race in fairly short order, but there will be other developments as well.

Dean Phillips Goes There

I’m attacked for being honest and saying the quiet part out loud - the part DC insiders only do in private.

I admire our President. I voted for him and campaigned for him. He has visited my home and been gracious to my family and our country.

But shame on all of you pretending… pic.twitter.com/OdaKvW7vbc

— Dean Phillips (@deanbphillips) February 6, 2024

Dean Phillips, a moderate Democrat representing a largely prosperous Minnesota suburban district in the House, is running against Biden in a long-shot bid for the Democrat nomination. Since Joe's fitness to serve is currently among the top issues for the 2024 general election, Phillips has had little choice but to bring it up, which he does in the X post above.

He includes video of Joe's two most recent gaffes, the one on the left where he claims he talked to French President Mitterand after the 2020 election, when Miterrand died in 1996, and on the right the one where he struggles badly over a reporter's question about Hamas, slurring his reply. His comment:

But shame on all of you pretending everything is ok. You are leading us - and him - into a disaster, and you damn well know it.

Rep Phillips is simply echoing what Republicans have been saying since at least 2022:

A former White House physician says President Biden’s cognitive abilities have deteriorated to the point that they present a “national security issue.”

Rep. Ronny Jackson, Texas Republican, said that Mr. Biden should take a test of his mental acuity, which he said has obviously deteriorated at a time when the risk of a war with Russia requires a sharp U.S. president.

“I’m not trying to make a diagnosis,” cautioned Mr. Jackson, who was White House physician under President Trump. “But I think the whole world sees that he’s having some issues. He’s struggling cognitively.”

Speaker Johnson skirted close to the topic last weeK:

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) speculated Friday that President Biden’s staff is keeping him from taking executive action to stem the flow of migrants on the southern border.

“He knows that he has the authority. We’ve documented it for him. I’ve read to him the law myself — to the president. Read him the provisions of the law and said, ‘Mr. President, please take action,’” Johnson said on Fox Business on Friday morning.

“I don’t think he’s allowed to do it. I’m not sure Joe Biden is actually making these decisions. I think it’s staff around him, and they’re pushing him to hold the — or to keep the border open,” Johnson said.

Nobody can make a diagnosis who isn't a medical professional who's examined Joe in person, but when you think about it, police officers, who aren't medical professonals, are routinely expected to make judgments, based on their training and experience, about whether a person is too drunk to drive. I make no secret on this blog that I'm a big fan of police ride-along shows like Cops and On Patrol: Live, and those shows frequently feature DUI stops. DUI suspects, often the ones whose BAC is over .20, simply act a lot like Joe.

In the video Rep Philips posted on the right above, the one where he struggles with his answer about Hamas, Joe's behavior strikes me as remarkably similar to the typical symptoms of intoxication the Sarasota County deputy outlines in this episode of Cops on YouTube:

At 1:45, he explains, concerning the woman he'd stopped,

I would almost describe her as lethargic. She was very slow to respond to my questions. Her speech was at a slowed pattern. It was also slurred at times while she was talking. And sometimes I would ask her a question and she was nonresponsive to the question I was asking, or the answer that she would give did not correspond to the question.

All I've been able to surmise, after watching Joe over a period of years, is that notwithstanding whatever medical conditions he may have, which almost nobody is qualified to diagnose, he's also plastered pretty much all day, every day, which is a judgment most adults are capable of making, and for which trained police officers can explain reliable criteria. Joe's speech patterns correspond to those of people with alcohol impairment.

My estimate is that Joe has been an alcoholic since his early teens, just like most of the Biden family, but was able to function well enough to conceal it as long as he was just a small-state senator or vice president.

(For that matter, my mother, on Nixon's right, worked for the Republican National Committee when we lived in Washington area. Part of her job was taking donors to meet Sen Dirksen, Republican leader at the time. She was instructed to explan to them that the senator was holding a glass of iced tea, not a mint julep. I would guess that Joe is just a creature of that environment.)

In fact, Joe has been known for "gaffes" over his whole career. I submit that the "gaffes" are the coonsequence of his lifelong normal state of intoxication.

Basically, my guess is that Joe is basically checked out, the duties of the presidency are an interruption and an annoyance, and when he's forced to perform them, he's plastered. I can't disagree that this is starting to look like a national security issue. At some point, Trump is going to call him out on that.

Overtaken By Events

Trump has been moving with astonishing speed since the weekend to seize the initiative over the border. The best indicator is Joe's speech at the YouTube link above, where he struggles to control his slurring while wearing an ill-fitting suit -- note how the back of the jacket collar stands out from his neck. This is the sort of thing Dr Jill, if nobody else, should be on top of. Is he losing weight?

(I've got to say again that his slurring and his clear efforts to control it by deliberately slowing down, for instance around 0:20, are a recognized symptom of alcohol-impaired speech and suggest his blood alcohol count is somewhere well above 0.0, despite his repeated claims never to have had a drink. What time does he get started in the morning?)

The reason for Joe's sudden appearance was clear:

When asked Tuesday morning about whether any Senate Republicans would vote in favor of advancing the bill, Senate Minority Whip John Thune responded: "I think it’s unlikely because I just think our members are still — they want more time to evaluate it."

Thune also said that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is "rushing it" by pushing for a vote to be held Wednesday on whether the bill should proceed.

From other reports,

Chaos has erupted among Senate Republicans debating a sweeping bipartisan border bill so much that screaming could be heard from behind closed doors. This according to from Fox News Capitol Hill reporter Aishah Hasnie, who also reported that even one of the bill’s co-authors, Republican James Lankford, is likely to vote against his own bill in the interest of party unity.

Senate Republicans find themselves in a bit of a sticky situation as House GOP has followed the direction of former President Donald Trump — who is motivated by not giving President Joe Biden a significant win during an election year — and more moderate conservatives (like the editorial board Wall Street Journal) who are calling on passing generational legislation to secure the border.

Joe summed up his problem in yesterday's speech:

“Now, all indications are this bill won’t even move forward to the Senate floor. Why? A simple reason: Donald Trump,” Biden said during a public address on Tuesday.

He claimed that Trump thinks the bill is “bad for him politically,” and, therefore, it is being opposed by Republicans in the House and Senate.

. . . “It’s time for Republicans in Congress to show courage, to show spine, to make it clear to the American people that you work for them, not for anyone else."

As I surmised in yesterday's post, the Senate Repubican moderates are terrified of appearing to go against Trump on the biggest issue so far of this year's campaign, and both McConnell and Thune have had to give them a graceful way out of their previous support for the bill. Joe is entirely correct, the Republican moderates are terrified -- the problem is that he and his advisers were expecting them to be terrified of him, not Trump. This is how David Axelrod, who'd previously been mildly critical of Joe, viewed the state of play over the weekend:

On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Inside Politics,” CNN Senior Political Commentator and former Obama Adviser David Axelrod stated that President Joe Biden has shifted positions on immigration because Democrats have moved on the issue because busing migrants to sanctuary cities “has been very effective” in getting Democrats to flip.

. . . Axelrod responded, “Yes. Two points on this: Whatever you think about what Gov. Abbott (R) has done, it was diabolically clever, because by shipping these migrants to cities that call themselves…sanctuary cities, he has created issue[s]. . . . And suddenly, Democrats are engaged in this issue in a different way than they had been. So, that has been very effective. I think that the President has responded by engaging in these very difficult negotiations. . . . And now, what we see is Donald Trump telling his people, don’t agree to that. I don’t want Biden’s name on the bottom of that bill. That will help him.

Axelrod had read the way this was going to go, at least if the Democrats were smart, but Joe let events get ahead of him, and yesterday's speech was a belated recognition that he'd been outplayed, as had Republican leader McConnell:

Republicans in the Senate are expected Wednesday to reject the deal, and McConnell's critics are slamming him for how he has handled the legislation. Tuesday, several of them held a press conference, where Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, demanded that McConnell step down from his party leadership position.

Meanwhile, with former President Donald Trump leading in the GOP primary and potentially returning to the White House next year, McConnell may find it harder to hold onto his leadership spot.

Trump, whose opposition to the border deal has reportedly led to its opposition from Republican lawmakers, has often called for McConnell to be ousted, including after the senator criticized Trump in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol violence.

This has prompted McConnell's critics to speak out more publicly against him over the bill.

Trump's effective nomination with only token resistance has, again, put him in a much stronger position than he had in either 2016 or 2020, and on the border crisis, he's controlling the agenda not only in the House, where Republicans have a very slim majority, but in the Senate, where they're in a minority. Yet without a majority -- and indeed, without necessarily evan a majority of Republicans -- he was able to defeat McConnell's bill. This has got to be a sobering development for McConnell.

Yesterday I speculated that Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel had been told to resign by the end of the month. Later in the day, it looked like she did exactly that:

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has told former President Donald Trump that she will step down from her post later this month, soon after the South Carolina primary.

Trump, 77, is expected to back North Carolina Republican Party Chairman Michael Whatley as McDaniel’s replacement after the Palmetto State’s Feb. 24 primary, sources told the Associated Press Tuesday.

The former president and GOP primary front-runner hinted on Monday that McDaniel, 50, should vacate her position after the RNC reported decade-low fundraising numbers entering the presidential election year.

One down, one to go. Trump is a phenomenon, it's unwise to underrate him.

Boom!

No sooner did I post yesterday on Trump's next tasks, which I saw as neutralizing Leader McConnell and RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, than it looks like he has them both well in hand.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) made the shocking decision to recommend Republicans block the advancement of the Senate pro-migration border bill.

. . . McConnell cited the overwhelming number of Senate Republicans planning to vote against the measure either on substance or because they wanted more time, according to Punchbowl News.

. . . According to Punchbowl, McConnell said the political mood in the country has changed since negotiations began months ago. At that time, McConnell and Democrat leaders agreed to pair foreign aid to Ukraine, of which McConnell is the Senate’s greatest champion, with a border compromise.

So what's changed about the political mood of the country? Just one thing, Donald Trump. In a remarkably brief period between his indictments, most of which took place last summer, and the start of the 2024 primary season, Trump began to exceed expectations in national polls, culminating in a rapid victory over his potential primary opponents, most of which withdrew from the race before New Hampshire. At this point, he's actually in a far stronger position than he was in 2016, with the nomination now out of reach for any other candidate at the start of the primaries. At the same time, his position against Biden in general election polls is steadily improving.

This has put him in the position of Republican party leader and quasi-incumbent. with an enthusiastic base. It appears that McConnell and the other Senate Republican moderates were blindsided by the strength of the Trump base when they finally unveiled the text of their "compromise", which contained every one of the elements they'd previously denounced as "internet rumors". According to the link,

Leaked details of the secretive deal, which McConnell’s chosen Republican lead negotiator Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) and other allies denied, were confirmed Sunday upon the bill’s release. The overwhelming opposition led to McConnell altering his plan Monday night.

Even Lankford, who continued championing the deal leading up to Monday night’s Senate Republican Conference meeting, would not say after the meeting if he would vote to move forward Wednesday on the deal he negotiated, according to the Huffington Post.

It looks like McConnell's only option, with the House Republican leadership refusing to take up the Senate bill, is to find a way for the Senate Republican moderates to back out without going on the record with a vote.

Meanwhile, Trump has given RNC Chair McDaniel to the end of this month to resign gracefully or be fired:

Donald Trump reportedly sat down with RNC chair Ronna McDaniel at Mar-a-Lago for more than two hours Monday to discuss the status of the party.

According to Politico, the meeting took place after Trump filmed an interview with Newsmax in which he said, "I think she knows that, I think she understands that," in response to a question from Rob Schmitt as to whether it was time for McDaniel to step aside.

According to Politico,

After the meeting, Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that McDaniel was his “friend,” but said he would be calling for changes to the committee following the South Carolina GOP primary on Feb. 24.

“Ronna is now Head of the RNC, and I’ll be making a decision the day after the South Carolina Primary as to my recommendations for RNC Growth,” he wrote.

. . . Trump, who is the strong frontrunner to win the GOP nomination, suggested that he would push for changes during an interview that aired Sunday on Fox News.

“I think she did great when she ran Michigan for me. I think she did OK, initially, in the RNC. I would say right now, there’ll probably be some changes made,” he said.

Trump is simply beginning to drive events. A lot of people haven't woken up to that, but the primaries are over, and Trump is already beginning to anticipate the outcome of the general.

Trump's Job

It's hard to disagree with Sen Lee's characterization of the Republican "compromise" security bill and Sen McConnmell's leadership:

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) called for Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.) to be replaced as Senate Republican leader Sunday, denouncing the new border security deal McConnell supports as “an unmitigated disaster.”

“This feels like an elaborate practical joke. But it’s not funny. Not one bit,” Lee wrote on social media when the details of the bill were made public.

This follows, though, on the remarkable success of the House conservatives in removing Kevin McCarthy as Speaker and replacing him with Mike Johnson. Trump has allied himself with Johnson over the Senate "compromise":

In terms of dictating Republican policy, Trump in recent weeks has gone out out of his way to try and kill the bipartisan bill to address border security.

Trump, who has spoken repeatedly with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., says the bill in unnecessary, and that Biden should use the authority he already has to seal the border.

Johnson reiterated his opposition in the wake of the final text's release:

“I’ve seen enough,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) declared Sunday night.

Just hours after Senate negotiators unveiled their pro-migration border bill, Johnson pledged the bill would never move through the House.

“This bill is even worse than we expected, and won’t come close to ending the border catastrophe the President has created,” Johnson posted on X. “As the lead Democrat negotiator proclaimed: Under this legislation, ‘the border never closes.'

This is clearly setting up an intra-party conflict between Trump, McConnell, and the Senate moderates. The problem for the moderates is Trump's currently growing strength in the polls, while his only remaining opponent, Nikki Haley, ia rapidly shedding credibility. Her remarks so far have been in favor of the Senate compromise, although passage in the Senate itself isn't assured.

Another major goal will be removing Ronna McDaniel as head of the Republican National Committee:

Donald Trump appeared to distance himself from Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel on Sunday amid growing discontent from some of his allies, suggesting that her time leading up the organization might be coming to an end soon.

“I think she did great when she ran Michigan for me,” Trump said on Sunday during an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Features [sic]” with Maria Bartiromo. “I think she did okay, initially, in the RNC. I would say right now there’ll probably be some changes made.”

. . . His more skeptical turn on Sunday surprised some people close to his political operation who had seen the appeals to Trump, but believed he’d remain above the fray given the nearing general election.

Trump allies have grown increasingly sour on McDaniel over the past few months, and the criticism came to a head last week when FEC filings revealed the RNC had around $8 million cash on hand, marking its worst fundraising year in almost a decade. In recent weeks and days, people close to Trump have ramped up their long-brewing complaints against McDaniel both in public and privately to the former president himself.

. . . Trump’s latest comments represent a sharp change in rhetoric when it comes to McDaniel’s position at the RNC: Last year, he said she’d done a “fantastic job” running the organization and opted against endorsing Harmeet Dhillon, one of his allies who ran against her for the position. After his victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, McDaniel urged Republicans to “unite around our eventual nominee, which is going to be Donald Trump,” an unusual direct endorsement from a sitting party chair that came despite Trump shunning the RNC-organized debates.

Ms McDaniel clearly understands her new circumstances. As Trump secures the delegates to assure his nomination, I feel pretty certain he'll move to consolidate control over the party, something he hadn't had in his first term.

How Do They Get The Toothpaste Back In The Tube?

One of the additions to the language that came out of the Watergate scandal was the lament from Nixon's aides that "we can't get the toothpaste back in the tube". In other words, certain disclosures can't be un-disclosed after the fact. This actually strikes me as the futile goal of Fani Willis's February 2 filing with Judge McAfee:

Willis and Wade have been subpoenaed to testify in a Feb. 15 evidentiary hearing that the judge in the election interference case scheduled to examine the allegations against them, but the DA in her filing has asked the judge to deny the motions from the defendants and essentially cancel the hearing, claiming that "no further factual development is necessary."

However, even Newsweek is suggesting things have gone too far for that:

Legal analyst and former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman warned that there is "blood in the water" in the developing Fani Willis-Nathan Wade investigation, despite his belief that their relationship presents "no conflict" to Willis' case against Donald Trump.

. . . "It's 100 percent true under Georgia law, she needed to do it. The law of these kinds of scandals is to get it all out early," he explained. "The thing is, by now, there's sort of blood in the water. You have one of these phoney baloney special investigative commissions in Georgia, none other than [House Judiciary Chair] Jim Jordan subpoenaed her today. [Judge Scott] McAfee's going to have a hearing on the 15th and oddly, even before this, he styled it an 'evidentiary hearing.' So what sort of evidence is it going to take? It could be a bit of a circus."

However, Ashleigh Merchant, the attorney who originally brought the scandal to light, filed an almost immediate response to the court:

The filing spells out some of the probing questions Merchant would ask [Willis's lover Nathan] Wade at an evidentiary hearing about her charges against Willis, if a judge allows it to go forward in the explosive case.

Merchant's filing cites a 2019 judicial conference where according to the Willis filing Wade says he and Willis met and became friends. 'In Paragraph 17 of your affidavit, you swore that you met Ms. Willis in October of 2019 at a Municipal Court training. Isn’t it true that you began more than just a friendship at that conference?' Merchant asks, without revealing the source of her information.

Merchant's filing says 'witnesses will testify that you cohabitated with Ms. Willis at her home in South Fulton until her father moved in with her and you then began to cohabitate at the apartment of a friend of hers in East Point.'

. . . It said the pair had been seen together in public and said they are 'believed' to have cohabited – something Willis denies in her filing. Merchant's filing states that she 'knows the special prosecutor and has researched his litigation experience' – saying he has never tried a felony RICO case and has a 'lack of experience in this type of felony,' and raised doubts about his 'qualifications.'

Another link adds additional information from Merchant's filing:

“Let us be clear: if Mr. Roman [Merchant's client] had not uncovered the now-admitted personal relationship between Willis and Wade, no one may have ever known about it,” the filing says. “That raises the obvious and important question: If they had nothing to hide in the first place because they did nothing wrong, then why did they intentionally not tell anyone about it until they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar?”

The filing proceeds to dispute several statements made by Wade in his sworn affidavit.

“In Paragraph 31 of your affidavit, you swore that you have never cohabitated with Ms. Willis but the attached documents show you shared a king size bed with her in Aruba from November 1, 2022 until November 4, 2022,” the filing reads.

Since the February 15 appearance is characterized by the judge as an "evidentiary hearing", we may assume that Ms Merchant will be able to cross-examine Willis and Wade about their statements that they haven't cohabited, and they share expenses equally. If she can demonstrate that those claims are false, this could well affect the judge's decision on how to handle the defense's motion for dismissal or some lesser remedy.

But beyond that, Willis herself acknowledges that the allegations -- which she has effectively acknowledged are true -- are "salacious". Her only option is to find some way to bring public discussion and late-night TV jokes on the subject to a complete stop. One way to start would be to get the judge to cancel the February 15 hearing, but he has his own reputation to consider, and this is unlikely in my view.

But the toothpaste is out of the tube. The Nathan's Hot Dog meme is just too delicious.

Keeping Track Of The Whole Fani Willis Saga

The big news yesterday was Fani Willis's acknowledgement of a "personal" relationship with her special prosecutor Nathan Wade, but that was just a limited hangout meant to minimize what was already generally and correctly assumed. I decided to bring myself up to date on the whole range of other motions, lawsuits, subpoenas, and allegations against Willis in the wake of the initial complaint by defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant on behalf of Trump codefendant Mike Roman. Quite a lot has emerged in just a three-week period.

The original Roman motion to disqualify Willis was filed on January 8 with Judge Scott McAfee, who is presiding over the Fulton County RICO trial. All the other actions have cascaded from this motion.

On January 12,

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent a letter to Nathan Wade, an associate of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, demanding documents and information about the coordination of the Fulton County District Attorney's Office (FCDAO) with other politically motivated investigations and the potential misuse of federal funds. Although Fani Willis has so far refused to cooperate with the Committee's oversight, invoices that Nathan Wade submitted for payment by the FCDAO, and made public as part of a court filing, highlight this collusion.

The letter requested all documents, communications, memoranda, invoices, and contracts by Januatry 26. The response from Wade's office is currently unknown, althokugh a February 2 subpoena by Jordan, discussed below, appears to be an attempt to enforce this initial request.

On January 21, the chairman of the Fulton County Audit Committee,

Bob Ellis, sent a letter to Ms. Willis late last week asking whether she engaged in a “romantic relationship” with Mr. Wade or if she “misused” county funds. He also asked whether she “accepted valuable gifts and personal benefits from a contractor [or] recipient of County funds.”

. . . His letter also demanded that the district attorney’s office provide invoices, costs, fees, and other expenses since Jan. 1, 2021. He gave her a deadline for Feb. 2, 2024.

On January 25,

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump said the district attorney in the Georgia election interference prosecution should be removed from the case, claiming she “inappropriately injected race into the case and stoked racial animus” in response to allegations of misconduct against her.

. . . [Trump's lawyers allege] she vigorously defended Wade and his qualifications in a speech during a service honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at a historic Black church in Atlanta on Jan. 14. She suggested during that address that the questioning of Wade’s hiring was rooted in racism.

“These assertions by the DA engender a great likelihood of substantial prejudice towards the defendants in the eyes of the public in general, and prospective jurors in Fulton County in particular,” Sadow and Little wrote. “Moreover, the DA’s self-serving comments came with the added, sought after, benefit of garnering racially based sympathy for her self-inflicted quagmire.”

In doing this, Trump officially joined the original motion filed by Ashleigh Merchant on behalf of Mike Roman to disquality Willis based on her undisclosed relationship with Wade.

On January 26,

the [Georgia] state Senate approved legislation that will permit a special committee to investigate Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis amid misconduct allegations.

The alleged misconduct "includes the ongoing expenditure of significant public funds for the purpose of hiring a special assistant district attorney with whom District Attorney Willis had, and may yet have, an ongoing romantic relationship," the resolution states.

On January 31, the Washington Free Beacon reported on a 2022 whistleblower complaint by Amanda Timpson, an employee in the district attorney's office.

Timpson claimed to Willis that she had been demoted after attempting to stop a top Willis campaign aide from misusing federal grant money meant for a youth gang prevention initiative.

According to Timpson, the aide, Michael Cuffee, planned to use part of a $488,000 federal grant—earmarked for the creation of a Center of Youth Empowerment and Gang Prevention—to pay for "swag," computers, and travel.

"He wanted to do things with grants that were impossible, and I kept telling him, like, 'We can't do that,'" Timpson told Willis in a Nov. 19, 2021, meeting. "He told everybody … 'We're going to get MacBooks, we're going to get swag, we're going to use it for travel.' I said, 'You cannot do that, it's a very, very specific grant.'"

. . . Less than two months later, Willis abruptly terminated Timpson and had her escorted out of her office by seven armed investigators, according to Timpson. When Timpson filed a whistleblower complaint the following year that alleged wrongful termination, Willis's office issued a statement describing Timpson as a "holdover from the prior administration" who was terminated because of her "failure to meet the standards of the new administration."

. . . Timpson in August 2022 filed a whistleblower complaint in Fulton County Superior Court, seeking damages for lost wages. The case is in discovery.

The Washington Free Beacon story outlines other allegations from Timpson that cover widespread misallocation of grant money from numerous sources for computerrs, airfare, hotels, and car rentals. The Free Becon infers that this is a general pattern in Willis's office that extends beyond the particular Nathan Wade scandal.

On January 31, Ashleigh Merchant, the lawyer for Trump co-defendant Michael Roman who filed the original motion that's led to the subsequent events, filed a lawsuit against Willis with a subpoena demanding that she and Wade testify in the February 15 hearing in Judge McAfee's court:

Merchant alleges in the lawsuit that the DA’s office isn’t complying with the Georgia Open Records Act by intentionally stalling requests for documents. She said that the office has “refused, without adequate explanation, to provide” Roman’s legal team “with many of the requested materials that are known to exist and which are not subject to any exception in the Act and some of which have been outstanding since September of 2023.”

Merchant asks the court to order the DA’s office to hand over the records she seeks or show that they can’t be provided. She also requested that the court award her team the expenses incurred in trying to get Willis to comply with the law.

On February 2, following up on the Free Beacon story linked above,

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has subpoenaed Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis over allegations that she misused federal funds.

In the subpoena and cover letter, both obtained by FOX 5, Jordan claims that the District Attorney's Office has "failed to comply voluntarily" with the committee's requests for documents connected to the office's receipt and use of U.S. Department of Justice grants.

. . . Jordan cites in the new letter to Willis a report from the Washington Free Beacon alleging that Willis fired an employee who tried to stop the Fulton County District Attorney's Office from using a federal grant for the creation of a Center of Youth Empowerment and Gang Prevention for travel, computers and "swag."

. . . Willis has been asked to appear before the Judiciary Committee in Washington, D.C. on the morning of Feb. 23 - a little more than a week after she is scheduled to appear before a Fulton County judge for a hearing on allegations she had an improper romantic relationship with Wade.

This subpoena appears to have been issued in response to Wade's not answering Jordan's January 12 letter. So far, Willis's pattern has been either not to respond to requests for information or to suggest that the allegations against her are based on racism. At this point, though, she will still need to respond to the Fulton County Audit Committee, the February 15 hearing in Judge McAfee's courtroom with the additional Ashleigh Merchant subpoena on that date, the request to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on February 23, and as yet unspecified inquiries from the Georgia state Senate.

This pressure is likely to be unrelanting, and it's hard not to think it will begin to affect the Fulton County RICO trial, as of now tentatively scheduled for August. My own view is that she won't survive this level of public exposure.