Fani Willis must prove herself before a judge, her voters and the whole country

When Fani Willis took the stand to trade sharp elbows with lawyers defending Donald Trump and his co-defendants, she stood before three audiences.

But Willis only really cares about two of them.

The first is an audience of one: the superior court judge Scott McAfee, who will rule sometime two weeks or so from now on whether Willis, the special prosecutor Nathan Wade and the rest of the Fulton county district attorney’s office will continue to handle the Trump trial, or if instead it will be handed to another attorney chosen by the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia.

If Willis is bumped off the case, it almost certainly means there will be no resolution before the US presidential election in November, in which Trump is almost certainly going to be the Republican nominee for president again.

Willis and her team have been presenting evidence and testimony to rebut questions about financial motivations for pressing the case against Trump by showing how much personal harmWillis and her staff have had to endure in the process. Willis’s father, the venerable civil rights attorney John C Floyd, gave florid testimony today about the death threats and harassment that drove Willis from her home as she prosecuted the case, for example.

McAfee recognizes high-drama courtroom confrontations for what they are: irrelevant to the legal question. He must decide if the appearance of impropriety and the legal question of alleged unjust enrichment raised by the defense are sufficient to create an appellate court problem if Trump and others are convicted at trial. Has there been misconduct, and is removing Willis the appropriate remedy under the law if there has been misconduct? That’s the legal question.

But it’s not the only issue for Fani