A remarkable reproof from Judge Scott McAfee to the district attorney of Georgia’s Fulton County, Fani Willis, underscores that the disqualified prosecutor has more problems than just her upended case against President Trump. 

The tense courtroom exchange came after Judge McAfee, a Republican who is also presiding over the prosecution of Mr. Trump and 18 others for election interference, asked tough questions about a plea deal hammered out between Ms. Willis’s office and a defendant, Robbie Lewis, who has been charged with some 36 crimes over the last two decades. 

Ms. Willis had reached a plea deal with Mr. Lewis, a career violent criminal who’s been in and out of prison for the last two decades, for him to spend another 10 years behind bars for a raft of new charges including aggravated assault, false imprisonment, kidnapping, armed robbery, and other crimes. 

Ms. Willis elected not to pursue Lewis as a recidivist, which would have resulted in stricter sentencing. Lewis could have faced life in prison — this accord means that he will spend a decade behind bars. As part of the deal he will also not be required to name any accomplices.

The contours of that agreement appeared to outrage one of Lewis’s victims, Shahram Moshiri-Zavieh. ABC’s affiliate in Atlanta, WSB, reports that he said, “They robbed me, they beat me up, they hit me with the gun, they stole my money, they took all the keys to my cars … and I’m suffering from that. I’m not accepting it, your honor.”

Judge McAfee, who is 35 years old, appeared to share that sense of umbrage and distanced himself from the plea agreement, saying in court that “we’ll note that if the district attorney is concerned the bench here in Fulton County is soft on crime, this offer did not come from the bench.” The judge also noted the strength of the case against Lewis, arguing, “We’ve got DNA, cellphone records, and video footage.”

At times, it appeared as if Judge McAfee was cross-examining Ms. Willis’s office. According to Law & Crime, he asked: “If the state could just walk me through the basis for their reduction?” He added, “I’m familiar with the facts of this case. And I’m familiar with Mr. Lewis’s history. I think this is the most serious case I’ve seen the Trial Division have — maybe in the past year.”

Ms. Willis, in a statement defending the deal, explained that “in this case, the Defendant was sentenced to 25 years to do 10 years. He will serve every day of 10 years in a Georgia penal facility because he pleaded guilty to kidnapping.” She adds: “A judge is ultimately ALWAYS responsible for sentencing. Clearly Judge Scott McAfee thought the sentence was appropriate because he accepted the sentence and made no amendments.”

Ms. Willis, who won re-election in November after garnering some 70 percent of the vote, is referencing that it is ultimately up to the judge, not a prosecutor, to accept or deny a plea deal or a decision to drop charges. Judge Dale Ho, in New York, probed the Trump administration’s decision to drop charges against Mayor Adams before ultimately ruling to drop them “with prejudice,” meaning that they cannot be refiled. 

Securing sentences that are less than the legal maximum is nothing new for Ms. Willis. Her racketeering case against the record label YSL, which she alleges is also a criminal gang, ended with no murder convictions after a raft of acquittals and plea deals. Her other racketeering case, against Mr. Trump and his camarilla for election interference, is frozen pending a decision from Georgia’s supreme court on whether Ms. Willis’s disqualification will be upheld.

It was Judge McAfee who initially declined to disqualify Ms. Willis for her secret romance with her handpicked special prosecutor, Nathan Wade. He found, though, that their behavior emitted an “odor of mendacity” and a “significant appearance of “impropriety.” Ms. Willis’s office paid Mr. Wade some $650,000 and the two took vacations together to destinations like Belize, Napa Valley, and Aruba. She testified that she paid him back in cash.

Judge McAfee determined that the impropriety created by the affair could be cured by Mr. Wade departing the case, which he did the same day as the judge’s ruling was handed down. The Georgia court of appeals, though, decided by a two-to-one margin to overrule Judge McAfee to find that “this is the rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings.”