Just one month after Trump’s infamous January 2021 phone call to suggest Georgia’s secretary of state could overturn his election loss, the Fulton County district attorney announced she was looking into possible illegal “attempts to influence” the results in what has become one of America’s premier political battlegrounds. As she built her case, Willis called a parade of high-profile witnesses before a special grand jury, presiding over an investigation that was so public it seemed she would become the first prosecutor in U.S. history to indict a former president.
She is the third person to levy criminal charges against Trump, leapfrogged by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith. But the indictment that Willis brought could be the most sprawling case against Trump in response to his desperate efforts to remain in power after he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. And some legal experts say it could be one of the more potent cases against Trump.
“I think people are going to be surprised at the level of preparedness and the level of sophistication of the prosecution,” said Clint Rucker, who was a prosecutor in Fulton County for more than 25 years before leaving in 2021. “That office is not some small backwoods country hick organization that fumbles the ball and doesn’t know how to do its job.”
Trump has stepped up his criticism of Willis in advance of the charges, calling the 52-year-old Black woman “a young woman, a young racist in Atlanta.”
Willis has long declined to comment on Trump’s insults. But with his campaign running a vicious attack ad last week, she emailed her staff to warn that it included “derogatory and false information” about her and instructed them not to react publicly.
“You may not comment in any way on the ad or any of the negativity that may be expressed against me, your colleagues, this office in coming days, weeks or months,” she wrote.
“We have no personal feelings against those we investigate or prosecute and we should not express any. This is business, it will never be personal.”
Willis has led plenty of prominent prosecutions, but nothing that compares to indicting a former president, particularly one who fights his perceived enemies with the intensity of Trump. She is widely expected to use Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, law to charge not only the former president but also a collection of his allies for alleged participation in a wide-ranging conspiracy.
Some critics say she overuses gang and RICO laws, unnecessarily complicating cases that could otherwise be tried in less time with fewer resources, just to get the enhanced penalties those statutes carry. Devin Franklin, an attorney for the Southern Center for Human Rights who spent 12 years in the Fulton County public defender’s office before leaving last year, said using those laws drives a “narrative of violence in Atlanta that’s not true, that’s not necessarily reflected in the data.”