District Attorney Fani Willis of the Atlanta area is set to announce charging decisions this summer relating to her election-interference investigation into former President Donald Trump and his allies.
In a letter to local law enforcement, she warned of the potential for violent reactions to the announcement, which marks a key milestone in her two-year probe.
WSJ reported:
Atlanta-area District Attorney Fani Willis will announce “charging decisions” this summer arising from her election-interference investigation into former President Donald Trump and his allies, according to a letter she sent to local law-enforcement agencies warning of the potential for violent reactions to that key milestone in her two-year probe.
In the letter addressed to Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat, Ms. Willis said she would be announcing charging decisions relating to the investigation sometime between July 11 and Sept. 1.
Ms. Willis said she wanted to give law-enforcement agencies sufficient time to prepare for the “significant public reaction” her announcement could trigger.
“We have seen in recent years that some may go outside of public expressions of opinion that are protected by the First Amendment to engage in acts of violence that will endanger the safety of our community,” Ms. Willis said. “As leaders, it is incumbent on us to prepare.”
The letter was earlier reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
While Mr. Trump wasn’t called to testify in the probe, some legal experts have said he is a potential target. Mr. Trump has insisted repeatedly that he did nothing wrong after the election.
Ms. Willis’s warning to law enforcement suggests charges against Mr. Trump are likely, said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
“She’s basically sending out a save-the-date card,” Ms. Levinson said.
Ms. Willis, a Democrat, has been probing Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn his election defeat in Georgia for about two years. No indictments have been issued in the investigation. While Ms. Willis’s statement Monday didn’t say charges would be laid against anyone, it strongly hinted that charges would come in the summer, possibly against Mr. Trump.
As part of her inquiry, she has investigated associates of Mr. Trump as well as the group of activists who met after the election in the Georgia capital and voted to certify Mr. Trump as the winner in the state, despite the vote count showing Democrat Joe Biden had won.
Ms. Willis’s letter came about a week after she declared in a legal motion that some of the self-identified “alternate electors” had turned on each other and shouldn’t be represented by the same lawyer.
In the motion, Ms. Willis stated her office had interviewed some of those 16 Republican Party activists. During those interviews, conducted on April 12 and April 14, some of the individuals said a person involved in the elector plot “committed acts that are in violation of Georgia law,” according to the District Attorney’s Office. The filing didn’t name the person accused of wrongdoing or specify the conduct at issue.
In May 2022, a special grand jury was assembled at Ms. Willis’s request. It issued a report in January detailing a yearlong investigation into possible election interference in the state’s 2020 presidential election.
That grand jury called 75 witnesses to testify, including prominent Republicans such as Rudy Giuliani and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. The special grand jury didn’t have authority to issue indictments, but in portions of its report that was released to the public, the grand jury stated that witnesses may have committed perjury. Ms. Willis, who has the complete report, now can seek indictments through regular criminal grand juries.
