Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp was rewarded for his masterful duplicity.
On Thursday, the Republican governor received praise from supporters of liberal democracy after he publicly dismissed calls by Georgia Republicans to announce a special session of the Legislature to investigate and possibly indict Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis over a racketeering case against former President Donald Trump.
In fairness, the utterances that get the most attention sound principled.
“Let me be clear: We have statute in the state of Georgia that clearly outlines the legal action that can be taken if voters believe their local prosecutors are violating their oath through unethical or illegal conduct,” Kemp said at a news conference. “Up to this point, I have seen no evidence that DA Willis’ actions, or failure to act, warrant intervention by the Prosecuting Attorney Oversight Commission.”
He also said that calling a special session to indict Willis “is not feasible and could ultimately prove unconstitutional.” (Such a move would require a two-thirds majority in the Georgia Senate, which would require Democratic votes.)
The problem here, however, is that Kemp approved the very mechanism that pro-Trump lawmakers want to use to remove Willis from office. Kemp signed Senate Bill 92 authorizing the creation of a prosecutors oversight commission that would oversee all such efforts.
When Kemp signed SB 92 in May, he repeated the overtly political attacks Republicans had launched against Willis and other Democratic prosecutors, claiming the bill was intended for “rogue or incompetent prosecutors who refuse to obey the law.” and said he would hold “prosecutors driven by detached politics” responsible.
In fact, those remarks essentially mirrored Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that Willis isn’t pursuing real crime in the Atlanta area and is instead pursuing winning political jobs.
For this reason, at Kemp’s press conference, I saw a man trying to put out a fire he had started (or at least appeared to be doing so for political reasons).
This is a point that Kemp’s critics have also noted.
Jill Habig is the founder of the Public Rights Project, an advocacy group representing a bipartisan coalition of prosecutors working to prevent SB 92 from going into effect. She said in a statement: “Governor Kemp’s comments discouraging Georgian officials from taking retaliatory action against prosecutor Fani Willis are welcome, but too little and too late.”
She added that Kemp “has already opened Pandora’s box by creating a partisan commission with broad and vaguely defined powers to investigate, discipline and remove duly elected prosecutors, including for ‘Bring'[ing] The office fell into disrepute.’” And Habig also noted that under SB 92, Kemp controls only 25% of the commission’s appointments.
Kemp’s support for SB 92 shows that he has an uncertain view of prosecutorial independence.
The dubious legal basis on which SB 92 rests and the near certainty that it will be used for political purposes are precisely the reason the Public Rights Project and the prosecutors it represents have sued SB 92 and the Prosecuting Attorneys Stop creating Oversight Commission. (I recently spoke to Habig about this effort for The ReidOut Blog – read it here.)
Kemp’s support for SB 92 shows that he has an uncertain view of prosecutorial independence. It’s well and good that he doesn’t think there’s any reason to use it against Willis now. But he essentially handed the anti-Willis Conservatives a gun when he signed the bill and told them how to deal with it.
Now he wants them to resign.
