OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
A co-defendant in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ election interference case against former President Donald Trump says he’s preparing to take legal action against her over an incident that allegedly took place with his attorney in Maryland.
According to reports, Harrison Floyd alleges that Willis’ office unlawfully recorded a phone conversation with his lawyer in an unrelated criminal case in Maryland.
Floyd alleges that Willis and her office may have violated the Maryland Wiretapping Act, which requires consent from both parties before recording any in-person or telephone communication.
In a video posted to the social networking platform X, Floyd claimed that Willis was targeting him to further a “racist agenda.”
“Deep down she wants to make me pay for what she feels is a betrayal to black culture,” Floyd said in the video clip, going on to say that Willis had made the case against him and his co-defendants “about race.”
Statement: #faniwillis #fultoncounty #racism https://t.co/peO7qAjIPW pic.twitter.com/KvZeJiEotJ
— Harrison Floyd 🇺🇸 (@hw_floyd) April 8, 2024
“I don’t want to put a black woman in Jail. But if @FaniforDA does not recuse herself from this case by noon on Monday, I may have no other choice than to pursue all lawful remedies. Make Fulton Great Again,” Floyd had posted earlier on X.
Newsweek reported: “Under Maryland’s Wiretap Act, recording a private conversation without consent from both parties is punishable by up to five years in prison, a fine of up to $10,000, or both.”
Fox5 added:
Willis has been criticized by the judge overseeing the case in a ruling over a speech at an Atlanta church in January in which she claimed she and Nathan Wade, the former special prosecutor on the case whom she had a romantic relationship with, were being scrutinized because of their race.
“First thing they say, ‘Oh, she’s gonna play the race card now,” Willis said. “But no God, isn’t it them that’s playing the race card when they only question one? Isn’t it them playing the race card when they constantly think I need someone from some other jurisdiction in some other state to tell me how to do a job I’ve been doing almost 30 years?”
Willis denied accusing the defendants of racism, but McAfee pointed out that her statement was ambiguous and it was unclear who she was referring to in terms of racial motivations.
“More at issue, instead of attributing the criticism to a criminal accused’s general aversion to being convicted and facing a prison sentence, the District Attorney ascribed the effort as motivated by ‘playing the race card,'” McAfee wrote. “She went on to frequently refer to SADA Wade as the ‘black man’ while her other unchallenged SADAs were labeled ‘one white woman’ and ‘one white man.’ The effect of this speech was to cast racial aspersions at an indicted Defendant’s decision to file this pretrial motion.”
While he found Willis’s speech “legally improper,” McAfee ruled that the questionable statements regarding race had not denied the defendants the “opportunity for a fundamentally fair trial.”
Floyd, who used to be the director of Black Voices for Trump, was the only one among the 19 defendants in the case who spent some time behind bars at the Fulton County Jail in August. Unlike the other defendants who had their lawyers contact prosecutors for a bond agreement before surrendering themselves at the jail, Floyd appeared on Aug. 24 without a lawyer or a bond agreement. His lawyer negotiated a $100,000 bond, and he was released on Aug. 30.
Last month, Floyd was granted a certificate of immediate review by District Judge Scott McAfee, leaving him free to file a motion in another court contending that Willis exceeded her jurisdiction when she filed election-related racketeering charges against him.
