I mean, I definitely think she could be disqualified.
We've got this new Commission in Georgia that's looking hopefully
looking into this and they could disqualify her.
She's facing re election. She's got two opponents right now,
so there's a lot of other checks and balances that
are in place plus more information can come forward and
we are continuing to investigate.
The attorney who exposed the Funny Willis and Nathan Wade
affair is now leading an emergency appeal of the judge's
ruling to keep Willis on the Georgia election interference case.
The defense argues Wade's resignation is not enough constitutional law
Attorney and Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley joins me now.
There was one other part of her Fox and Friends
interview that I thought was very interesting.
Let's play that for you here.
It's about the money Watch.
There's a lot of different funds that the District Attorney
gets.
They get federal funds, they get state funds.
And particularly what you were asking about is forfeiture funds.
That's when the government takes someone's property or takes someone's
money,
and then the District Attorney has those funds and they're
able to use them.
The thing is, the law has very specific requirements for
how you can use those.
And so she's getting federal forfeiture months money,
and that is being used to pay Nathan Wade.
We've we've tracked over $100,000 in payments to him just
from forfeiture funds.
All right, Jonathan, Charlie, what do you think is going
to happen next?
And does her point about the money focus the mind?
Like a lot of these stories,
we have to remind ourselves,
follow the money. And when you do,
you get to a different conclusion,
right, Dana? The the difference is,
of course, the federal government doesn't operate entirely on a
cash basis the way Willis and Wade did.
So there's actually a record that you can follow and
there are limits on how you use the the funding
coming from forfeiture and other sources.
So that may cause a problem for the office.
But I also felt that the Fox interview with Merchant
was really quite interesting.
You know, she was treated in a a shabby and
unfair way by Willis's office.
You know, they attacked her on the first day of
the hearing and said that she was unethical
and had violated professional standards.
By raising this, the court ultimately vindicated her.
It found that Wade had to go,
and if he didn't, the whole office would go.
So she prevailed. She showed that she had a good
faith basis as an attorney in raising these issues in
her motions.
It was an incredibly disgraceful
attack by this office. And what was disturbing is that
Willis had her office really resisting every
effort to disclose evidence that would ultimately lead the court
to disqualify one of the two.
And now the question is how can you do that
and not disqualify them both?
You know, essentially Willis ratified and incorporated the testimony of
Wade.
If he was lying, so was she.
It is interesting to to watch this because I imagine
also that Wade and Fonnie probably don't talk that much
anymore,
I would imagine. But hey,
we don't know for sure.
We can find out. I just want to ask you
about this.
The Supreme Court's had this pretty big week
of hearing a lot of cases on ones that you
care about a lot.
I know you care about free speech
and you talk about it a lot.
This is today Texas Councilwoman Sylvia Gonzalez.
She was charged with violating a Texas law,
and she says that wasn't right.
Listen to her here from yesterday.
Freedom of speech is a very important
thing that we have in our country and we should
be able to use it.
And if you look across the board today,
there was Murthy versus Missouri.
This is the censorship case.
Should the Canada government actually tell a private company to
censor somebody,
an individual In America, there was the NRA versus Volo
and Gonzales versus Trevino.
This is this one about probable cause.
What do you think the court's getting at here?
Well, there are indeed important First Amendment cases here,
someone associated with the free speech community.
We're all on edge. It was chilling in the social
media case to hear justices like Jackson repeatedly say,
what's the problem with the government coercing speech?
Why shouldn't they when there are really troubling periods
that were the government acting within like in the pandemic
and many of us really sort of were a gape
at that.
Because, you know, much of what the government did on
censorship was wrong.
That as many things that they were censoring by scientists
who were fired and disciplined
and barred from social media.
In some cases they were vindicated ultimately on things like
the origin of the virus,
showing that it's not just a possibility.
Many consider it the leading possibility.
Closing of schools, they were vindicated on on many of
those things and yet you had Jackson saying,
I don't see why the government can't coerce social media.
So we're all very concerned where the government will land
there.
Gonzales had many of us said,
hello, Her case is hugely important because people are being
targeted by a weaponized system these days,
and that case could put that front and center.
And will these cases most likely will get
answers by the end of June?
Yes. And the Volo cases also,
you have to consider it with Gonzales because in Volo,
what the New York government was doing was attacking the
revenue sources of organizations like the NRA that they didn't
like,
telling them you better not be doing business with the
NRA.
We've seen that out of the Biden administration.
They've been funding grants to create blacklists,
targeting conservative libertarian sites to try to squeeze them and
deny them funding.
So these cases have sweeping implications for the for our
system,
our political system and our legal system.
Jonathan Turley, thank you. We appreciate it and go.
Have a good day. Thanks,
Dana.