The Dunning-Kruger effect is a bias in the brain in which you tend to think you are better at something than you actually are. The Dunning-Kruger effect is widely held across a variety of skill sets. In the United States, it’s generally held by a lot of people who think they are smarter than they actually are — but it’s particularly held by people who have been made untouchable by the system.
Now, if you’ve been made untouchable by the system and you’ve just been rising through the ranks for years based on your intersectional identity, you are going to think you are much better and more competent than you actually are.
This is the story of Fani Willis, the Fulton County District Attorney.
She’s the person who’s brought charges against former President Trump based on supposed violation of RICO law, which really does not apply in this particular case. It’s certainly a legal stretch, but she’s been attempting to make a name for herself. If she can get Trump on a state charge, he can’t pardon himself if he is president of the United States.
Things started to fall apart for Willis over the last couple of months. She was a heroine in the media. She was a “hard-charging prosecutor”; she was going to finally get Trump.
But, as it turns out, she is a prime example of the Dunning-Kruger effect — but with the intersectional twist because she apparently thought she could get away with literally anything.
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Before Willis was elected, she explained why exactly she should be the D.A.: “Because they deserve a D.A. that won’t have sex with his employees; because they deserve a D.A. that won’t put money in their own pocket when it should go to benefit children, because we deserve better.”
THROWBACK: Fani Willis on why the people of Fulton County should support her for District Attorney:
"Because they deserve a DA that won't have sex with his employees, because they deserve a DA that won't put money in their own pocket." pic.twitter.com/L8pQ3xTv23
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) February 15, 2024
As we found out, the Fulton County people did not actually receive that D.A.
According to Forbes:
Willis faces accusations she violated state conflict of interest and public money laws over claims from a group of Trump’s co-defendants that she engaged in an “improper, clandestine personal relationship.” Court documents have also shown Wade and Willis traveled together on two vacations, while state records reveal Wade earned more than $650,000 working with Willis.
On Thursday, there was an evidentiary hearing in court in which the defendants asked that Willis essentially be removed from the case for conflict of interest and she, for some odd reason, decided she was going to testify. This came after she had basically destroyed her own timeline.
The question was whether she had hired this guy because he was super-competent and she had paid him and then they fell in love and they started going on cruises and having sex and all the rest — or whether she had known the guy for a while and decided to bring in her lover to pay him state taxpayer dollars and then go on vacations with state taxpayer dollars, not based on the interest of the people of Fulton County, but based on her own personal interest in the guy she was sleeping with.
One of Willis’ employees and pals explained that Willis was actually in a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade as early as 2019.
There are two issues in this evidentiary hearing.
Issue number one is when Willis started dating Wade and if it was earlier than the appointment, which suggests, of course, that she appointed him because she was sleeping with him.
Issue number two is, even if she was dating him after they got together on the case, was she then expending taxpayer dollars on him in ways she wouldn’t on any other employee?
Willis failed on both accounts. The court then called Wade who tried to deny he was dating Willis in 2020. Instead, he tried to claim that because he had a form of cancer, it was not possible for him to have a romantic relationship because he was trying to isolate from others.
It didn’t go over amazingly well in court after he was questioned. He finally admitted he actually, indeed, could have been dating her and was paid for a bunch of stuff that was really not appropriate.
At that point, Willis decided she had to fight.
Every defense counsel will tell you, “Do not get on the stand.” Very few people are good witnesses in their own defense. They’re really bad witnesses.
Willis happens to suffer from two things: One, she’s not telling the truth, and two, she happens to be one of the most off-putting witnesses in human history. The Dunning-Kruger effect that I discussed? That fact was obviously present with Willis. It was almost beyond comprehension.
This lady thinks she’s good at her job, that she is convincing, and comes off as honest, forthright, and righteous. Yet she comes off as precisely the opposite. Instead, she comes off as obnoxious, lying, and scheming, and it’s really bad. So Willis truly blew up on the stand.
She started off by suggesting that making her even answer questions is contrary to democracy, which is weird because it is well within the boundaries of democracy to ask whether the D.A. who is prosecuting Trump for political reasons is, in fact, a corrupt person who’s having sex with the other prosecutor and paying him vast quantities of taxpayer cash while taking vacations with him.
She made the claim that the defendant’s interests are contrary to democracy — the claim being that the defendants tried to overturn an election; therefore, she is completely scot-free on the question of whether she is, in fact, a corrupt public servant.
She went full-out Al Pacino in “And Justice for All”: “You’re out of order! The whole trial is out of order!”
In her testimony, she stated: “I object to you getting records. You’ve been intrusive into people’s personal lives. You’re confused. You think I’m on trial. These people are on trial for trying to steal an election in 2020. I’m not on trial, no matter how hard you try to put me on trial.”
It’s an evidentiary hearing to determine whether she should be disqualified. So technically, in this particular portion of the trial, her actions are on trial.
Brazenness is not going to substitute for actually being innocent.
And it got worse and worse for her. She started yelling that the media lied about her, which is weird because, again, she’s the one who apparently lied a lot.
She said the money she gave Wade “…was never that serious. I don’t think I’ve ever handed him more than $2,500 in a reimbursement. So we’re not talking about $20,000 in cash. I don’t have $20,000 in cash right now. The most I ever gave him, I know I gave him $2,500 when we went to Belize because we went to one hotel and then we went to a second hotel. That $2,500 I actually gave him while we were still in Belize. I know that the Aruba trip, the one that you describe with his mom, I think I gave him about $2,000 for that trip.”
She was asked why she paid him back in cash. There’s no record of her actually reimbursing him for half of the travel.
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What she did looks like a kickback. If I hire my wife or anyone else who is in a close personal relationship with me and pay them a lot of money, and then we take cruises together that the other person is paying for, the idea is that I’m supposed to pay for my half to demonstrate that I’m not actually stealing money from the government.
But there’s no record of her having paid Wade back. Instead, she said she paid him back in cash. She was asked why exactly she paid Wade back in cash all the time and where it came from. She replied, “I do know where it came from. It came from my sweat and tears.”
Trump’s attorney is going to be able to make the very obvious and clear case that Willis ginned up this entire case so she could, in high-profile fashion, hire the guy she was sleeping with so she could go on an expensive cruise with him.
Even on MSNBC, analyst Caroline Polisi admitted that the case against Trump is possibly dead in the water. “Don’t let the legalese fool you. This is epic. This is monumental. If things are going in the direction we think, Fani Willis lied to the court, it’s game over for her. She will be disqualified.”
Fani Wallis got her wish. Donald Trump made her famous. Donald Trump made her prominent. Donald Trump may end up putting her in jail, which is just hysterical.
So we bid a fond farewell to Fani Willis whose career is basically over because, once again, the Dunning-Kruger effect is undefeated for a lot of people.