Fani Willis, the steely Georgia prosecutor who charged Trump
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[August 15, 2023]
By Andrew Goudsward and Tom Hals
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The indictment of Former President Donald Trump
for interfering in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia will be the
biggest case of prosecutor Fani Willis' career, but it will not be her
first contentious prosecution.
Willis, the Fulton County District Attorney who charged Trump with
illegally trying to overturn his defeat under a law that prosecutors
typically use against organized crime gangs, is known for her tenacity
in pursuing criminal cases, at times drawing accusations in her
community of overreach.
"Rather than abide by Georgia's legal process for election challenges,
the defendants engaged in a criminal racketeering enterprise to overturn
Georgia's presidential election result," Willis told a late night press
conference after the indictment was filed.
Willis previously successfully led a high-profile prosecution of
schoolteachers in Atlanta who cheated to improve the standardized test
scores of their students and indicted well-known rappers for alleged
gang activity.
“She’s not afraid of big cases,” said Gerald Griggs, a criminal defense
attorney and president of the Georgia state conference of the NAACP.
“She’s not afraid of going against popular opinion and public
sentiment.”
The indictment of Trump, the front-runner for the Republican
presidential nomination in 2024, is of a different magnitude for a
prosecutor whose office is focused on local crimes in the Atlanta area.
The case marks the fourth time Trump has been indicted this year.
But attorneys in Georgia said the case has a special resonance in a
state with a history of voting rights battles and would endure even if
Trump is elected president in 2024 and ends the federal prosecutions
against him or pardons himself in those cases.
Willis, a Democrat and the first woman in the district attorney post,
has faced a barrage of criticism and at times inflammatory attacks from
Trump in the run-up to the indictment.
Trump, who has denied wrongdoing, has accused Willis of targeting him
for political gain, called her a racist and criticized her handling of
violent crime in Atlanta, Georgia's largest city and part of Fulton
County.
Willis has brought to the election investigation the same apparent
indifference to outside criticism that has defined her career as a
prosecutor, according to lawyers who have worked with her.
"You are both wrong and confused," she wrote last year to a lawyer for
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, who called the election probe politically
motivated. “Despite your disdain this investigation continues and will
not be derailed by anyone’s antics.”
ANTI-MOB LAW
Throughout her career, Willis has made aggressive use of Georgia's
anti-racketeering law, initially designed to target organized crime,
which is the cornerstone of the indictment against Trump and his
associates.
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Fulton County District Attorney Fani
Willis speaks to the media after a Grand Jury brought back
indictments against Former President Donald Trump and 18 of his
allies in their attempt to overturn the state's 2020 election
results, in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. August 14, 2023. REUTERS/Elijah
Nouvelage
Georgia's racketeering law is more far-reaching than its federal
counterpart, enabling charges against "corrupt organizations" if the
prosecution can show they engaged in a pattern of criminal activity
including two or more separate offenses.
The law was a central part of the prosecution in the Atlanta school
cheating case and is also key to the ongoing case brought by
Willis’s office against rapper Jeffery Lamar Williams, who performs
as Young Thug, and 27 others linked to him who are accused of gang
activity.
Willis has at times faced pushback from defense lawyers and
activists who have accused her of being overzealous in bringing
sweeping racketeering prosecutions. Willis has defended the cases as
legitimate. In the teacher case, 11 of 12 defendants were found
guilty of racketeering and conspiracy after a 2015 trial.
Jay Abt, a Georgia criminal defense lawyer who has represented
witnesses in the election investigation, said he disagreed with
Willis's use of the law, but added that her prosecutions are
carefully considered.
“She’s extraordinarily professional,” Abt said. “She’s not someone
who would take this lightly. She’s not flippant.”
‘BUILT FOR THIS’
Willis told South Atlanta Magazine in 2021 that she was raised
primarily by her father, a criminal defense attorney who was a
member of the Black Panther Party, a Black power movement that began
in the 1960s.
She graduated from Howard University, a historically Black college
in Washington, D.C., that Vice President Kamala Harris also
attended, and Emory University School of Law in Atlanta before
working as a criminal defense and family law attorney in private
practice.
Willis worked from 2001 to 2018 in the Fulton County prosecutor's
office, then won election as county prosecutor in 2020, defeating
her former boss, Paul Howard. She faces re-election next year.
Willis campaigned on building leniency programs for some low-level
offenders, but also adopted a hard line on violent crime and gang
activity.
Griggs, the NAACP leader who worked with Willis at the start of his
legal career, said she is adept at blocking out outside criticism in
major prosecutions.
“She’s built for this,” Griggs said. “Anybody that thinks they can
unleash insults from a podium and that’s going to shake Fani Willis
is sorely mistaken."
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward in Washington and Tom Hals in
Wilimington, Delaware; Editing by David Bario and Alistair Bell)
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