It has come to light that Jeffrey Toobin has offered a bleak assessment for those who are hoping to witness former President Donald Trump face trial in Georgia sooner rather than later via Mediaite.
Well, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has charged Trump and his co-defendants under Georgia’s RICO statute for their actions after the 2020 election. The former president has recently falsely claimed that the election was rigged against him and attempted to subvert the results in Georgia and other states he lost.
Willis has been under the radar in recent weeks after she was revealed to have had a romantic relationship with attorney Nathan Wade, whom she assigned to the case. Wade billed more than $700,000 to Fulton County while taking personal trips with Willis, calling into question whether Willis was materially benefitting from the relationship at taxpayers’ expense.
Moreover, Wade had never tried a felony case. On Friday, Judge Scott McAfee ordered Willis to either step down from the case or remove Wade from the prosecution. Shortly after the ruling, Wade resigned.
Appearing on Friday’s AC360, Toobin, a former federal prosecutor, weighed in.
“Today was a very good day for Donald Trump,” he began. “This case is going nowhere.”
Toobin pointed to a separate ongoing RICO case in Georgia in which jury selection took nearly 10 months, which he said bodes poorly for a speedy trial in Trump’s case.
“This case is never going to trial before the election,” he continued. “It’s an embarrassment. All of this. Fani Willis has hung on, but this case going nowhere very quickly.”
Anderson Cooper then turned to Gwen Keyes, a former district attorney in DeKalb County, Georgia.
“I disagree with Mr. Toobin,” she said. “I do think that there is enough evidence to go forward. I think that particularly the timing in this case, while we’ve had one racketeering case that has taken a long time to go to a jury, that’s an anomaly. In my 17 years as a state prosecutor. I’ve never seen it take 10 or 12 months to get a jury. And in the last RICO case that I’m aware of D.A. Willis taking to trial – with 12 defendants – she was able to get a jury in about four weeks. So, I think that’s the precedent that we should be looking at.”
Later in the segment, Toobin pushed back on Keyes’ analysis.
