Judge Andrew Napolitano, in a Newsmax interview, said he doesn't believe Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will be removed from prosecuting former President Donald Trump in the 2020 Georgia election case.
Napolitano made his remarks in a Friday appearance on "Wake Up America."
His comments came after a former law partner of Fulton County special prosecutor Nathan Wade was evasive on the witness stand Tuesday as lawyers pressed him on details about a romantic relationship between Wade and Willis that has roiled the case against Trump, The Associated Press reported.
Terrence Bradley, Wade's onetime divorce attorney, was believed to be a key witness for lawyers seeking to remove Willis from the case. But when they questioned him, Bradley repeatedly said he did not know or could not remember when Willis and Wade's relationship began.
Napolitano said: "The problem with that is one of expectation. The defense told the judge we have a star witness who's going to destroy the Government's argument and he didn't. Either he had a lapse in memory, or he's shading his testimony to help his former client. It just didn't come off the way the people seeking the ouster of Fani Willis and Nathan Wade said it would come off.
"I do not think the judge is going to exclude her from the case. But I do think the case and her reputation have been irretrievably damaged, and she should — as lawyers should do when their presence in a case is going to harm the interests of the client — she should take a step back from the case and let another team of prosecutors who worked for her and work under her prosecute it.
"She should not set foot in that courtroom because she's toxic. She should not appear before the jury, and the judge should rule today and end all this pretrial stuff. Donald Trump and the others have the right to proceed to trial in an orderly manner, and the state has the right to proceed to trial in an orderly manner, and whether these motions to exclude her and Mr. Wade were properly made or not. It's decision time, your honor, and it should come today at the end of oral arguments.
"I do think the judge may file some ethics charges against them. I'm not sure that all three of them were, let's say, brutally honest on the witness stand. I don't second-guess what's in their heads. But there's enough there from which ethics investigators to say you were less than fully truthful.
"It's become a soap opera."
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Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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