Jonathan Turley: This was ‘incredibly disgraceful’

I mean, I definitely think she could be disqualified. We've got this new commission in Georgia that's hopefully looking into this, and they could disqualify her. She's facing re-election. She's got two opponents right now. So there's a lot of other checks and balances that are in place. Plus, more information can come forward, and we are continuing to investigate. The attorney who exposed the Fannie Willis and Nathan Wade affair is now leading an emergency appeal of the judge's ruling to keep Willis on the Georgia election interference case. The defense argues Wade's resignation is not enough. Constitutional law attorney and Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley joins me now. There was one other part of her Fox and Friends interview that I thought was very interesting. Let's play that for you here. It's about the money, watch. There's a lot of different funds that the district attorney gets. They get federal funds, they get state funds, and particularly what you were asking about is forfeiture funds. That's when the government takes someone's property or takes someone's money. And then the district attorney has those funds and they're able to use them. The thing is, the law has very specific requirements for how you can use those. And so she's getting federal forfeiture money, and that is being used to pay Nathan Wade. We've tracked over $100,000 in payments to him just from forfeiture. All right, Jonathan Turley, what do you think is going to happen next? And does her point about the money focus the mind? A lot of these stories, we have to remind ourselves, follow the money, and when you do, you get to a different conclusion. Right, Dana. The difference is, of course, the federal government doesn't operate entirely on a cash basis the way Willis and Wade did. So there's actually a record that you can follow, and there are limits on how you use the funding coming from forfeiture and other sources. So that may cause a problem for the office. But I also felt that the Fox interview with Merchant was really quite interesting. She was treated in a shabby and unfair way by Willis's office. You know, they attacked her on the first day of the hearing and said that she was unethical and had violated professional standards by raising this. The court ultimately vindicated her. It found that Wade had to go, and if he didn't, the whole office would go. So she prevailed. She showed that she had a good faith basis as an attorney in raising these issues in her motions. It was an incredibly disgraceful attack by this office. And what was disturbing is that Willis had her office really resisting every effort to disclose evidence that would ultimately lead the court to disqualify one of the two. And now the question is, how can you do that and not disqualify them both? You know, essentially, Willis ratified and incorporated the testimony of Wade. If he was lying, so was she. It is interesting to watch this because I imagine also that Wade and Bonnie probably don't talk that much anymore, I would imagine. But hey, we don't know for sure. We can find out. I just want to ask you about this. The Supreme Court's had this pretty big week of hearing a lot of cases and ones that you care about a lot. I know you care about free speech and you talk about it a lot. This is today, Texas Councilwoman Sylvia Gonzalez. She was charged with violating a Texas law and she says that wasn't right. Listen to her here from yesterday. Freedom of speech is a very important thing that we have in our country and we should be able to use it. And if you look across the board today, there was Murthy versus Missouri. This is the censorship case. Should the Kennedy government actually tell a private company to censor somebody, an individual in America? There was the NRA versus Volo and Gonzalez versus Trevino. This is this one about probable cause. What do you think the court's getting at here? Well, there are indeed important First Amendment cases here. Someone associated with the free speech community. We're all on edge. It was chilling in the social media case to hear justices like Jackson repeatedly say, what's the problem with the government coercing speech? Why shouldn't they when there are really troubling periods that were the government's acting within, like in the pandemic? And many of us really sort of were agape at that because much of what the government did on censorship was wrong. That as many things that they were censoring by scientists who were fired and disciplined and barred from social media in some cases, they were vindicated ultimately on things like the origin of the virus, showing that it's not just a possibility. Many consider it the leading possibility. Closing of schools. They were vindicated on many of those things. And yet you had Jackson saying, I don't see why the government can't coerce social media. So we're all very concerned where the government will land there. Gonzalez had many of us at hello. Her case is hugely important because people are being targeted by a weaponized system these days. And that case could put that front and center. And will these cases most likely get answers by the end of June? Yes. And the Volo case is also, you have to consider it with Gonzalez because in Volo what the New York government was doing was attacking the revenue sources of organizations like the NRA that they didn't like, telling them you better not be doing business with the NRA. We've seen that out of the Biden administration. They've been funding grants to create blacklists, targeting conservative libertarian sites to try to squeeze them and deny them funding. So these cases have sweeping implications for our system, our political system, and our legal system. Jonathan Turley, thank you. We appreciate it and go have a good day. Thanks, Dana. I'm Steve Ducey. I'm Brian Kilme. And I'm Ainsley Earhart. And click here to subscribe to the Fox News YouTube page to catch our hottest interviews and most compelling analysis.