“Bizarre” and “unusual”: Legal experts raise concerns that Fani Willis and Jack Smith aren’t talking

Fani Willis David Walter Banks/Getty Images

Legal experts raised concerns after Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis revealed that she and special counsel Jack Smith are not coordinating in their investigations into former president Donald Trump and efforts to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election. In a Saturday interview with WABE, Willis said, “I don’t know what Jack Smith is doing, Jack Smith doesn’t know what I’m doing. In all honesty, if Jack Smith was standing next to me, I’m not sure I would know who he was. My guess is he probably can’t pronounce my name correctly.”

New York University Law Prof. Ryan Goodman told CNN that the dynamic is “most unusual” since federal and state prosecutors typically “coordinate, compare notes, maybe even share information about what witnesses have said” so they are not at a disadvantage against a certain defendant. “It’s bizarre, in a certain sense, because they’re not serving their own interests,” Goodman said. “Each one of them, their best interests should probably be in some level of communication. So one wonders is ego what’s going on here? Why is one keeping a distance from the other? That doesn’t quite make sense for what their true self-interests should be for pursuing justice.”

Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who served on special counsel Bob Mueller’s team, agreed that it was “not good practice” for Willis and Smith to not be talking. “There are so many reasons they need to coordinate, on witnesses and discovery among other things,” he tweeted. “Put your egos aside, and do what is right for the cases and country.”