Fulton County Georgia Prosecutor Fani Willis has hit back at former President Donald Trump after a series of attacks against her.
In a leaked email she shredded an ad that was running in the local market attacking her and advised her staff not to respond to it.
She also said that prosecutions by her and her colleagues were just “business” and not “personal,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
“It is my understanding that an ad was put in the Atlanta market to run between today 8/9 and 8/13 that will have derogatory and false information about me as the District Attorney of the Atlanta Judicial Circuit. Apparently a lot of money was spent to run this ad in the Atlanta market over the next 5 days. That means the ad will run quite frequently over the next 5 days,” she said.
“Each of you represents me. Especially, ADA’s who all took an oath under my name. We often remind you if you are an ADA you are my personal staff and represent me. Many of you are quite kind to me, very protective, and will become very defensive if someone attempts to attack me, the office or your colleagues. 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,” the prosecutor said.
“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,” she said.
The report said.
In the minute-long ad, titled “The Fraud Squad,” the narrator refers to Willis as “Biden’s newest lackey.” It says that Willis presided over a sharp rise of violent crimes in Atlanta and highlights her office being disqualified from investigating Lt. Gov. Burt Jones in her long-running election interference case due to a political conflict of interest.
But the most incendiary allegation is that Willis “got caught hiding a relationship with a gang member she was prosecuting.” It cites as evidence a Jan. 25, 2023, article in Rolling Stone.
But the ad gets several facts wrong. The Rolling Stone article is an interview with YSL Mondo, one of Willis’ former clients in 2019 when she worked as a defense attorney, and it doesn’t make reference to any sort of affair.
In the interview, Mondo is quoted saying that he had some “auntie-to-nephew, mother-to-son type of talks” with Willis. But the article notes that the two didn’t talk after his case was resolved.
Willis is rumored to be presenting her case to a grand jury next week and an indictment of the former president could come soon after, CNN reported.
“Willis could seek several indictments as she eyes a sweeping racketeering case that could cast Trump and several of his associates as operating as a criminal enterprise in their endeavors to upend Georgia’s election results,” the report said.
“I think she is going to tell a story,” Clark D. Cunningham, a Georgia State law professor, said to CNN. “The story of how one person at the top – the former president – really marshaled an army of people to accomplish his goal which was to stay in power through any means.”
Former US Attorney Michael J. Moore said “probably the indictment has been drafted and reviewed for months.”
“The indictment, word-for-word, is going to be flyspecked. You’re making sure there are no errors in it,” he said. “And you’re making sure you have enough pieces to prove each count.”
On Tuesday the former president was at a rally in New Hampshire when he tore into Willis, even mentioning an unsubstantiated rumor that she had an affair with a gang member.
“And I probably have another where they say there’s a young woman, a young racist in Atlanta, they say racist,” the former president said.
“And they say, I guess they say that she was after a certain gang and she ended up having an affair with the head of the gang or a gang member. And this is a person that wants to indict me. She’s got a lot of problems, but she wants to indict me to try and run for some other office,” he said.
“What’s going on in this country is, by the way, wants to indict me for a perfect phone call. This was even better than my perfect call with Ukraine. Remember that call? That was a perfect call. This one’s better. This one is more perfect,” he said.
