"District Attorney Fani Willis improperly hired an alleged romantic partner to prosecute Donald Trump and financially benefited from their relationship..."

"... according to a court motion filed Monday.... The bombshell public filing alleged that special prosecutor Nathan Wade, a private attorney, paid for lavish vacations he took with Willis using the Fulton County funds his law firm received. County records show that Wade, who has played a prominent role in the election interference case, has been paid nearly $654,000 in legal fees since January 2022. The DA authorizes his compensation. The motion, filed on behalf of defendant Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign official, seeks to have the charges against Roman dismissed and for Willis, Wade and the entire DA’s office to be disqualified from further prosecution of the case...."

From "Filing alleges ‘improper’ relationship between Fulton DA, top Trump prosecutor" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution).

"Now, the fact that a judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned doesn’t mean that the judge is partial."

"The public may simply not trust the impartiality of the judge. Because public trust in the work of the court is a value as important as the work itself, the rule says that the judge should not sit when we can’t fairly ask the public to trust what the judge does. That rule is especially important in this case. One thing the prosecution can do is move to recuse Judge Cannon on the ground that, in light of her experience in the search-warrant case last year, her impartiality might reasonably be questioned. And who would make that judgment if the government does push for this recusal? The judge herself gets to make that decision in our system. If she denies the recusal, the government could go to the Eleventh Circuit and ask it to order her to recuse herself... a process called mandamus.... Mandamus efforts are rarely successful...."

Says lawprof Stephen Gillers, interviewed in "Will the Judge in Trump’s Case Recuse Herself—or Be Forced To?/Federal law requires a judge to step away from a case in which her impartiality 'might reasonably be questioned'" (The New Yorker).

The judge — Aileen M. Cannon, assigned the case through the routine and random selection process — is a Trump appointee.

If the random selection had been a Biden appointee, would that judge also have to recuse herself/himself? If Cannon were to recuse herself, and she is replaced by a Biden appointee — or an appointee of any Democratic President — wouldn't Trump's demand for recusal be at least as strong as the prosecution's demand that Cannon recuse herself? We'd be talking about fairness to the accused. 

"The public may simply not trust the impartiality of the judge" — the public doesn't trust the impartiality of anything here. That's the problem with the pursuit of political goals through the criminal process... or the appearance that's what you're doing. The argument for recusal in this case is an argument about the appearance of partiality, but the appearance of partiality is baked into this case. Can anyone suggest how to unbake it?

"The investigation has raised expectations on the left of an event that Trump’s opponents have dreamed of for years: a criminal prosecution..."

"... of the reality-television star turned President.... But Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University, cautioned me that a successful prosecution of Trump would likely need to demonstrate that his reckless handling of classified information caused actual harm—such as adversaries learning about American intelligence methods. Trump’s lawyers would argue that he was merely guilty of carelessness. Trump himself, of course, would make the case that he was being politically persecuted. 'I don’t think a jury would convict him without proof of harm. I’m not sure I would,' Gillers said. 'He’s a sloppy guy, and he couldn’t let go of the Oval Office, so he dumped a lot of stuff into boxes—souvenirs of his Presidency.' Gillers added that, fairly or unfairly, prosecuting a former President requires meeting a higher legal and political threshold. 'It has to be one-hundred-per-cent irresistible as a matter of law,' he said. 'There can be no fact, no event, no piece of evidence that could support any room for ambiguity.'... A rushed prosecution that results in an acquittal would only strengthen the former President. The judicial process can be maddeningly slow. The best option for Trump’s opponents is to wait and trust...."

Writes David Rohde in "The Dangers of Trump-Prosecution Syndrome/The evidence that the former President mishandled classified documents is growing, but the legal process can’t be rushed" (The New Yorker).

Gillers makes some good points, but I have trouble with this visual: "he dumped a lot of stuff into boxes." Who thinks he packed his own boxes?

Bill Barr said something that was literally true but could still be considered a criminal false statement.

Lawprof Stephen Gillers explains in "When Is a 'Literally True”' Statement False and a Crime?"

I'll just excerpt the part about Bill Clinton:

Just as in daily life, judges say that a literally true answer can nevertheless be false if the witness knows what the questioner is getting at and intends to mislead by exploiting an imprecise question....

Bill Clinton famously argued that he did not lie at his deposition when he denied ever having had sex or being alone in a room with Monica Lewinsky. Clinton proposed definitions of “sex” and “alone” that, he argued, would make his answers true. In imposing sanctions against him, Judge Susan Weber Wright wrote:

Simply put, the President’s deposition testimony regarding whether he had ever been alone with Ms. Lewinsky was intentionally false, and his statements regarding whether he had ever engaged in sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky likewise were intentionally false, notwithstanding tortured definitions and interpretations of the term “sexual relations.”

"Normally Supreme Court justices should refrain from commenting on partisan politics. But these are not normal times."

Writes Paul Butler, one of 3 lawprofs addressing the questions "Can a Supreme Court Justice Denounce a Candidate? Is it ever appropriate or ethical for a justice to announce his or her preference in a presidential election?" — asked by the NYT on the occasion of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's indicating she's horrified at the idea of a Trump presidency.

I addressed the question myself last night, here, and my answer is closest to what Erwin Chemerinsky writes in the NYT. The third essay, by Stephen Gillers, rests heavily on the Code of Judicial Conduct, which doesn't apply to the Supreme Court, but, in Gillers's view, should. He cites the provision that judges should not "make speeches for a political candidate, or publicly endorse or oppose a candidate for public office" or "engage in any other political activity." I wouldn't interpret those provisions too broadly. Judging would collapse if we took "any other political activity" too seriously, since deciding cases is political, depending on what you mean by political. All Ginsburg did was answer a question in an interview. She didn't stage or appear at a political event. And her answer was a modest display of feeling: "I can’t imagine what this place would be — I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president... For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that." It's almost a refusal to respond, an oh, my.

But back to Professor Butler with his "normalness" template. I'm watching that. Click my "normal" tag to follow my interest in the idea of normal. These are not normal times, so suspend the normal rules. Who's being not normal? A. The person adjudged non-normal, thus unleashing others from the obligation to be normal or B. the person claiming things are now already non-normal and thus non-normal measures can be used?

And by the way, who's more like Hitler? A or B? I don't like bringing up Hitler, but those other people started it.