A lawyer and author renowned for his critiques of former President Donald Trump publicly criticized Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her case against the former president, calling it “unnecessary” and “partisan” in a podcast appearance on Tuesday.
Elie Honig, a former U.S. Assistant Attorney for the Southern District of New York, questioned whether Willis’s charges serve “the greater good” or “promote public confidence in the fairness” of the cases against Trump on the “CAFE Insider” podcast.
The 98-page indictment brought by Willis in August accuses Trump and 18 others of engaging in a racketeering conspiracy to illegally overturn the 2020 election results. Though he seemed to acknowledge her case could spread Trump’s legal resources thin, Honig warned that Willis might ultimately help Trump by undermining public confidence in the court system.
“If anything,” Honig (pictured above) exclaimed, Willis’s indictment will “lend fuel to Trump’s claims” that the cases against him have “become a Democratic Party pile on.” Honig added that it was especially worrisome for “a partisan with a D next to her name” to bring a case against the former president.
Though Willis has claimed her case is not political, Honig asserted she “has politicized her case” through messaging and fundraising and cautioned legal analysts who hesitate to criticize the Fulton County prosecutor and her case against Trump.
“I know it’s not popular to say, I think I missed the meeting where legal analysts were instructed you are to do nothing but praise Fani Willis,” said Honig, adding that Willis’s decision to raise campaign money after issuing a subpoena to U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was “not good form” and “does not promote public confidence.”
Honig also repeatedly stressed the similarity of the charges levied against Trump by Willis and special prosecutor Jack Smith, who he argued “already charged” Trump with “the effort to steal the election” in various states, including in Georgia.
“I know there’s going to be different angles,” Honig later added before insisting the case has “essentially, been charged by Jack Smith.”
Honig is also a senior legal analyst at CNN and the author of Hatchet Man, which Newsweek describes as “a ferocious attack on Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr.”
A trial date for the Georgia Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) case against Trump has not been set, but the case against lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell was severed from the greater indictment earlier this month in the first major blow to Willis’s prosecution. A trial for Chesebro and Powell is set to begin on October 23.
Additionally, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former U.S. Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark seek to have their respective cases removed from Fulton County to a federal court. A federal judge denied requests from both men, but Meadows and Fulton County have submitted filings to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which may set a date for oral arguments for his case.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Georgia Star News and a reporter for the Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Elie Honig” by Elie Honig.
