February 15, 2026

Election 2024 Lawfare

Fani Willis Owes Judicial Watch a Boatload of Money– townhall.com
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Excerpt:

A Fulton County court has ordered anti-Trump DA Fani Willis to pay Judicial Watch thousands of dollars in attorney’s fees and litigation expenses for flouting the state’s public records law.

BREAKING: The Superior Court in Fulton County, GA, issued an order granting $21,578 “attorney’s fees and costs” in the open records lawsuit for communications Willis had with Special Counsel Jack Smith and the House January 6 Committee (1/3). https://t.co/qcVL9VTlfT

— Judicial Watch ⚖️ (@JudicialWatch) January 7, 2025

In December, the same Superior Court found that the Fulton County district attorney violated Georgia’s Open Records Act (ORA) in a lawsuit brought by the government watchdog group. Under court order, Willis then confessed to wrongly withholding records that Judicial Watch had repeatedly requested.

“The ORA is not hortatory; it is mandatory,” Judge Robert McBurney declared in Friday’s five-page filing finding Willis financially liable. “Non-compliance has consequences. One of them can be [financial] liability,” McBurney chastised, like covering court costs.

Fulton County Attorney General Fani Willis and her entire office were disqualified from their cases against President-Elect Donald Trump and his allies. The disqualification came from the Georgia Court of Appeals, who ruled Willis had disqualified herself in how she conducted herself during the trial and even outside the trial, including on the campaign trail leading up to her election as the Fulton County DA in the first place.

The ruling means a board of Georgia Prosecutors will have to select a prosecutor to replace her, but most experts believe her cases are dead in the water as the basis for the cases in the first place was always on “novel” approaches that many would argue are flat-out unconstitutional.

Fani Willis Was Just Officially Disqualified From the Prosection of Donald Trump – RedState– redstate.com
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In a major blow to the prosecution against Donald Trump in Georgia, Fulton County DA Fani Willis has been officially disqualified from the case. An appeals court ruled on Thursday morning that her conflicts of interest were simply too great for her to remain involved.

That comes after a years-long fight involving Willis’ affair with Nathan Wade, a lawyer she had hired to be part of the prosecutorial team. Questions about how much taxpayer money he was paid and the impropriety of their relationship infected the process and led to the Trump team seeking Willis’ disqualification.

Lawfare Assassin Judge Juan Merchan is blinking once again, following up his original delay of the Trump sentencing until after the inauguration with a new order that delays the sentencing indefinitely while Trump appeals the conviction.

This appears to many legal experts to be the definition of a punt, with a hope that the bad ruling will be vacated, and all eyes will stop looking at the criminality of the case, criminality committed by the Judge and the Prosecutor.

Judge allows Trump to seek dismissal of hush-money case and delays sentence indefinitely – live | Trump administration– www.theguardian.com
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Donald Trump has been granted permission by a New York judge on Friday to seek dismissal of his hush money criminal case.

The permission follows his presidential victory on November 5 and multiple sentencing delays surrounding the case of which he was found guilty earlier this year.

With New York judge Juan Merchan indefinitely postponing Donald Trump’s criminal hush money case, attorneys on both sides are debating over its future.

Victoria Bekiempis reports for the Guardian:

Trump’s lawyers on Tuesday asked Merchan to throw out the case, contending that dismissal was necessary “in order to facilitate the orderly transition of executive power”.

Todd Blanche, Trump’s lead attorney and choice for deputy US attorney general, and Emil Bove, the president-elect’s pick for principal associate deputy attorney general, complained that Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s team “appears to not yet be ready to dismiss this politically motivated and fatally flawed case, which is what is mandated by the law and will happen as justice takes its course”…

Prosecutors disagreed that Trump’s case should be dismissed simply because appeals wouldn’t be decided before his inauguration. While they respected the presidency and understood the logistical issues, “no current law establishes that a president’s temporary immunity from prosecution requires dismissal of a post-trial criminal proceeding that was initiated at a time when the defendant was not immune from criminal prosecution, and that is based on unofficial conduct from which the defendant is also not immune.”

President Donald Trump will not receive an expected ruling from NY Judge Juan Merchan on November 26 regarding the status of his felony conviction as Merchan has ruled to suspend any ruling until after Trump’s inauguration. Team Trump called the ruling a “total and definitive victory for President Trump.”

Merchan stated, “Given the need to balance competing constitutional interests, consideration must be given to various non-dismissal options that may address any concerns raised by the pendency of a post-trial criminal proceeding during the presidency, such as deferral of all remaining criminal proceedings until after the end of Defendant’s upcoming presidential term.”

BREAKING: Trump claims ‘victory’ after Manhattan DA concedes in NYC ‘hush money’ case | The Post Millennial– thepostmillennial.com
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“This is a total and definitive victory for President Trump and the American People who elected him in a landslide. The Manhattan DA has conceded that this Witch Hunt cannot continue,” Trump Communications Director Steven Cheung.

On Tuesday, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg told Judge Juan Merchan that sentencing in the falsified business records case against President-elect Donald Trump should be postponed. Trump’s team celebrated the move, calling it a “total and definitive victory for President Trump.”

The filing stated, “The People deeply respect the Office of the President, are mindful of the demands and obligations of the presidency, and acknowledge that Defendant’s inauguration will raise unprecedented legal questions. We also deeply respect the fundamental role of the jury in our constitutional system,” per NBC News.

It appears Jack Smith sees the writing on the wall after the American people delivered to Donald Trump a decisive election victory. A New York Times report citing Smith insiders claims the embattled illegally appointed Special Council is planning on closing his cases and retiring before Trump is sworn in on January 20, 2025.

An announcement by House Republicans that anyone involved in Trump investigations should preserve their communications hints at the possible fulfilment of a promise made by Steven Bannon, who himself faces more lawfare charges. He said, “the hunter will now become the hunted,” and this writer is inclined to agree with that assessment.

Jack Smith to resign and wind down cases against Trump before inauguration– www.washingtonexaminer.com
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Smith’s goal is not to leave any significant part of his work for others to complete and to get ahead of Trump’s promise to fire him within “two seconds” of being sworn in, according to sources close to Smith who spoke to the New York Times. Smith led two federal investigations against Trump, with one pertaining to his alleged mishandling of classified documents and the other focused on Trump’s efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 election and the subsequent deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

This decision by Smith will make certain that the Department of Justice will follow through on its long-standing tradition of not investigating a sitting president for criminal acts.

It is not clear how quickly he and his team can finish his work on both cases, which makes it uncertain whether the investigations could be made public before President Joe Biden’s administration leaves office in January. Attorney General Merrick Garland has repeatedly implied he intends to release these reports to the public. Smith previously said he needed until Dec. 2 to decide exactly how to wind down both cases.