On Friday, March 1, the misconduct hearing against Fulton Country DA Fani Willis, an attempt to oust her from the RICO case against former President Donald Trump and 18 members of his 2020 campaign and legal teams, drew to a close. Each side, in their closing arguments, tried to set a favorable standard for where the bar for the disqualification decision should be set.
Steve Sadow, Trump’s defense attorney, did so with a powerful closing argument in which he sounded off on the “appearance of impropriety” in the case, saying that such an appearance is, under Georgia’s Code of Professional Conduct, more than enough to disqualify her. Here, he maintained there was, at the very least, such an appearance of impropriety given DA Willis’ sexual relationship with Nathan Wade and the trips they took together.
Sadow’s appearance came after Mr. Merchant, the lawyer for Mr. Roman, a co-defendant of former President Trump’s, argued that there was at least the appearance of a conflict of interest given the trips Willis and Wade took together. Merchant also highlighted the dire consequences of allowing Willis’ behavior to go unpunished, saying, “If this court allows this kind of behavior to go on and allows DAs across the state by its order to engage in these kinds of activities, the entire public confidence in the system will be shot and the integrity of the system will be undermined.”
Picking up on Merchant’s theme, Sadow said, “once you have the appearance of impropriety . . . That’s enough to disqualify.” Then, commenting on the speech DA Willis gave at Big Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Atlanta, in which she accused those bringing complaints against her of acting in a racist way, Sadow said the speech was also a “violation of professional rules of conduct.”
Explaining why the speech was inappropriate, Sadow argued, “It was a calculated determination by Ms. Willis to prejudice the defendants and their counsel.” Continuing, he said, “Can you think of anything more that would heighten public condemnation of the defendant than alleging that the defense counsel and the defendants were making their motion based on race and religion?”
Watch him here:
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Then came the attempt at rebuttal from Deputy DA Adam Abbate, who is defending DA Willis. Abbate asserted that the mere appearance of a conflict is insufficient for disqualification under Georgia law and that an “actual” conflict of interest must be established. Further, Abbate attempted to smear the disqualification effort against DA Willis, calling it “a desperate attempt to remove a prosecutor from a case for absolutely no reason, other than harassment and embarrassment.”
Torching Abbate’s performance, lawyer and Twitter personality Will Chamberlain said, “Incredibly painful” and “Abbate is just spewing word salad, he’s not making sense, he’s also just attacking witnesses left and right without a coherent theory of which testimony is believable and which isn’t.”
Further, in stark contrast to Sadow’s calm, cool, and collected closing argument, Abbate was all over the place and frequently fumbling when trying to recite case law or otherwise making a point. One commenter used a screenshot of Sadow’s quizzical stare at Abbate to note that Abbate’s performance was less than perfect.
Watch Abbate here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video