Trump unleashes on Fani Willis over her fight to shield prosecutors from GOP crackdown
Donald Trump attacked "racist" Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis on Sunday over her battle to shield state prosecutors from bills introduced by Republicans aimed at constraining their power to indict people like him.
Trump defended GOP state lawmakers' efforts, which he claimed would "make it easier to remove and replace local rogue prosecutors who are incompetent, racist, or unable to properly do their job," he posted in a message on Truth Social.
He also hailed the "courage" of the Republican-led state legislature to crack down on prosecutors just as indictments are widely expected to be filed in Georgia against Trump.
Two state measures being considered would create a new Georgia oversight board that could punish or remove prosecutors for vaguely defined reasons, including "willful misconduct." Another would slash the number of signatures required to seek a recall of a district attorney from 30 percent of registered voters to just 2 percent.
The proposals are viewed as part of a wider push by conservative lawmakers across the nation to pull up prosecutors they consider too liberal, The New York Times noted Sunday.
Willis is fighting back. She has called the bill that would establish an oversight panel "racist." Willis has also pointed out that she was not appointed to her post by the governor or state legislature — but directly chosen by 72 percent of Georgia citizens in an election in 2020. She answers to the citizens of the state, she has told the Atlanta-Journal Constitution in an interview.
Willis is convinced the Republican efforts are "targeting" her, and "maybe people with similar ideologies," seeking to put in place
ideologies that "don’t represent the majority of the state’s population,” Willis told the newspaper.
Trump is widely expected to be indicted by a Fulton County grand jury for actions attempting to overturn the presidential vote in the state, which he lost.
Willis launched her probe into Trump's activities aimed at upending the vote in the Georgia after he told local Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his chief counsel in a recorded phone call to "find" him just enough votes to beat Joe Biden — after the ballots had already been counted and certified. "Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break," Trump said on the call. He has since called the conversation a "perfect" phone call.
The top staff investigator for the House probe into the Jan. 6 insurrection believes indictments are near following Georgia's special grand jury probe into election manipulation in the state.
"It seems clear" there "will be indictments in Georgia," former U.S. attorney Timothy Heaphy said on MSNBC last month. "I'm basing this on the facts," he added. "There is strong evidence of a number of people committing both crimes in Georgia and federal crimes."