CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig ripped Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Wednesday after a county court judge tossed six charges brought by Willis in her racketeering case against former President Trump.
Honig claimed Willis’ "screw up" led to this move by the judge, and called it "embarrassing" for her and others prosecuting the case.
He acknowledged, although the central racketeering case against Trump is still "in place," the dismissal of six counts is a "setback."
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Willis’ case against the former president on his alleged conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia was derailed earlier this year when it was discovered she was allegedly having an inappropriate relationship with Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade. Willis hired him as one of the prosecutors to work on the case involving Trump.
The potential conflict of interest clouded the case and resulted in a dramatic evidentiary hearing last month where she denied the allegations on the witness stand.
Willis' case against Trump faced further controversy when Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee quashed six counts against Trump in the case Wednesday, stating in his order that the state failed to allege sufficient detail for six counts of "solicitation of violation of oath by public officer."
While speaking to CNN anchor Jim Acosta, Honig characterized this as a "screwup" on Willis and the prosecutors’ parts, and added it to the list of previous "screw ups" that Willis committed in her case against the former president.
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"I don’t think this ruling changes the type of evidence that the DA’s going to be able to introduce, but it does knock out some of the charges and look, it’s embarrassing for prosecutors," he said. "It’s a screw up by prosecutors when you bring a charge and then a judge throws it out before it even goes to trial."
He also criticized the DA’s behavior throughout the prosecution.
"There have been several screw ups, frankly, by the DA throughout the history of this case," he said. "Going back to the investigative phase, the DA got herself disqualified from a small piece of the case because she created a political conflict of interest."
He continued: "The judge who was overseeing the grand jury removed Fani Willis from the case. We’ve seen Fani Willis make public statements in the church and elsewhere that have now been called into question that I think violate the ethics of prosecutorial rules, and now we’ve seen six of the charges thrown out of the case."
"And unlike the conflict of interest issue, this does go to the charges against the defendant. This does go to the indictment itself," he added, before stating that the dismissal of charges is another "setback" for the case.
