"Perhaps" illegal?

Seems almost like a canary in a coal mine.  

From Fani Willis just gave Donald Trump exactly what he wants by Jessica Levinson,  The subheading is The fact that there was even a hearing into Willis' alleged financial conflict of interest is great news for defendant Trump.

Its MSNBC, therefore Trump is evil incarnate and guilty, just guilty.  Of what remains to be seen.  He is guilty and should not be allowed to run again.  In Levinson's telling, Willis was doing God's work bringing a case against Trump which would have severely impeded his run for President.

Levinson's lamentation is that Willis has now gone and screwed things up.  Willis's personal life and her actions and decisions have called into question whether Willis, as the Fulton County District Attorney, has a conflict of interest which would preclude her from involvement in the case.  Levinson's regret is that Willis has provided the grounds for exactly that outcome.  Were that to happen, Levinson fears that the case against Trump will either collapse or be put on hold till after the election.

The hero MSNBC championed now appears to be about to become the unwitting villain.  Willis led the charge on which so many Woke hopes hung and now has ended up subverting one of their key efforts to use lawfare to keep their biggest political opponent off the ballot.

Yes, there is an obvious irony that MSNBC and the Woke are eager to subvert the democratic process and interfere with elections.  Particularly by using novel and unusual interpretations of the law never used before.

All that aside, twice in this article Levinson says the quiet part out loud, appearing to acknowledge just how novel their legal approach has been.   

The novelties abound.  District Attorney Willis wants to make a case that Trump's efforts to ensure a proper 2020 vote count occurred constituted an illegal action.  That his actions and words to that end constituted an illegal act under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.  That it was appropriate for Willis to appoint an outside counsel with no experience prosecuting RICO cases.  That it was appropriate for Willis to make that appointment of someone when she had had or soon developed an intimate relationship with that person (prosecutor Wade).  That is was appropriate for her appointee (Wade) and his law firm partners to have all contributed to her election campaign.  That it was appropriate for Willis to take frequent luxury trips with Wade at his expense given that his income was entirely a consequence of her appointment of him as prosecutor.  

Lots of questionable decisions and actions on the part of Willis.  

Levinson's first signal.  Emphasis added.  

Thursday’s hearing took all the attention away from the egregious, and perhaps illegal, actions that Trump took trying to try to hold on to power. That’s a problem, because the case that Willis persuaded a grand jury to bring against Trump accuses him and 18 other people of conspiring together to rob Georgia voters of their choice of president. The indictment accuses Trump and his co-defendants of trying to take the election’s results and Georgia’s Electoral College votes away from Biden.

This is a large, expensive, complex, novel political lawfare case.  In the judicial system, most District Attorney's have two goals - to show that the act was criminal and then to show that the accused committed the act.  

The first step is routine and usually not that much of an issue.  DAs don't want to waste scarce resources on anything less than a slam dunk and therefore the overwhelming majority of cases involve 1) a clear and actionable crime and 2) clear and convincing evidence of the accused's guilt.

Levinson is acknowledging that it is not even clear that the case is based on an illegal act.  "Perhaps illegal."  It's worse than that.  "Perhaps illegal" is even weaker than "Probably illegal."  Levinson is saying out loud that this was a novel accusation and that it wasn't clear from the beginning whether a crime had even been committed.  Much less whether Trump had committed that possible crime.

Levinson says it again in her penultimate paragraph.  Says it again but even more weirdly.  Again, emphasis added.  

But the allegations against Willis have no bearing on whether Trump broke Georgia law as he allegedly tried to overturn the 2020 election. Trump’s actions created an existential threat to our democracy and may have been illegal. That’s the most important thing to remember.

The case brought against Trump is clearly speculative because his actions only "may have been illegal."  

The weirdness is in the logical construct.  If Trump is indeed an existential threat, then surely the crime he is accused of committing must actually be a crime.  Not "perhaps illegal," not "may have been" illegal.  

Levinson is acknowledging that the case is purely a political maneuver using the cover of the law to try and undermine a political adversary.  This is not about justice.  This about political power.  

And this is also, increasingly clearly, about the abuse of the judicial system in order to achieve political power outcomes independent of the democratic process.  

And Levinson is most upset about Willis putting that strategy at risk.  Levinson is no internet rando spouting off.  She is a law professor at Loyola Law School for ten years and a journalist for eight years.