“Wrong on the law, wrong on the facts”: Fani Willis blasts Jeffrey Clark’s “misunderstanding” of law

Fulton County, Ga. District Attorney Fani Willis sharply responded to former Trump Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark’s emergency motion seeking to delay his arrest until a federal judge hears his motion to remove the case to federal court, just ahead of the noon Friday deadline she set for him and his 18 co-defendants in the sweeping indictment accusing them of plotting to overturn the 2020 election. Willis argued that Clark’s request stems from “an apparent misread of the applicable statutes, a misapprehension of the binding caselaw, and a fundamental misunderstanding of criminal procedure.” U.S. District Judge Scott Jones on Wednesday rejected Clark’s motion, ensuring that he will face arrest this week.

“Defendant Clark boldly asks this Court for expeditious action when he himself has shown no urgency,” Willis’ office writes in the response, noting that Clark waited a week after his indictment to even notify the court that he intended to argue for the case to be transferred and request the stay over having to quickly travel to Atlanta. “As inconvenient as modern air travel can admittedly be, whatever nuisance involved in the defendant securing a flight to Atlanta within the window provided is self-evidently insufficient justification to invoke this Court’s authority to enjoin a State felony criminal prosecution,” Willis said. 

She later called out Clark’s justifications for making the requests, boiling them down to his “displeasure at the prospect of inconvenient travel” and hope to avoid passing any time at the Fulton County Jail. Clark “seeks to avoid the inconvenience and unpleasantness of being arrested or subject to the mandatory State criminal process, but provides this Court no legal basis to justify those ends,” the response concludes. “Defendant is wrong on the law, wrong on the facts, and the Motion should be denied.”