On Monday, the Fulton County District Attorney who is leading Georgia’s investigation into the attempt by Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election in that state shared the content of a racist and threatening email message she received last week.
According to a report in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, DA Fani Willis sent a group email over the weekend that warned leaders of the county to “stay alert” and “make decisions that keep your staff safe,” in the face of the threats her office has received about the criminal investigation that began in 2021.
Willis, who is African-American, said she received an email last week that had the subject line, “Fani Willis = Corrupt N*****.” The body of the email said, “You are going to fail, you Jim Crow Democrat whore.”
Willis said this message was “pretty typical” of what her office has been receiving. She added that she is aware of “equally ignorant voicemails” that have come into county offices, including her own.
The Fulton County DA also told CNN affiliate WXIA over the weekend that she will be announcing a charging decision by September 1. The investigation is being conducted into Trump and allies of the former president who were involved in attempting to overturn the presidential election results in Georgia. She said, “The work is accomplished. We’ve been working for two and half years. We’re ready to go.”
Willis also told WXIA that the Fulton County sheriff recently erected barricades around the county courthouse in anticipation of what the sheriff’s office has called “high profile legal proceedings.” She said the sheriff was “making sure that the courthouse stays safe.” She added she was concerned that county employees or “the constituents that come to the courthouse” not be placed in danger.
The right-wing and fascist threats against Willis have grown as the scope of the investigation has expanded, including the questioning of more than 100 witnesses. Among them were South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, who tried unsuccessfully to block his subpeona, along with Georgia Representative Jody Hice and Trump coup lawyers Kenneth Chesebro, Cleta Mitchell, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani and Jacki Pick Deason.
There are 16 individuals who signed fake Republican elector certificates that falsely claimed Trump had won the state of Georgia. In May, Willis revealed that eight of the 16 had signed immunity deals with the state, apparently in exchange for cooperation with the criminal investigation.
Willis launched the probe into the Republican ex-president and his supporters in February 2021, shortly after the phone call made by Trump on January 2, 2021 to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. During the call, Trump demanded that Raffensperger “find 11,780 votes,” which would have given him one more vote than Democrat Joe Biden and flipped the state of Georgia over to his campaign.
Also on Monday, one of Trump’s attempts to block the investigation and his likely prosecution by Fulton County suffered a legal blow. Georgia Fifth Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney denied the former president’s motion to disqualify DA Willis and quash the findings of the special grand jury that she convened to review the evidence in the case.
Judge McBurney wrote that Trump’s legal claim was “insufficient because, while being the subject (or even target) of a highly publicized criminal investigation is likely an unwelcome and unpleasant experience, no court ever has held that that status alone provides a basis for the courts to interfere with or halt the investigations.”
The judge also criticized the legal tactics employed by Trump is an effort to have Willis removed, writing, “Perplexingly, prematurely, and with the standard pugnacity, Trump has filed not one but two mandamus actions against the District Attorney and this Court.” A hearing on Trump’s second motion is scheduled for August 10.
The measures taken by Trump and his conspirators in Georgia were repeated in six other swing states— Arizona, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—where the 2020 presidential vote was contested in court cases claiming votes were stolen. All of these cases failed in court.
This was followed by a total of 84 people from these states signing phony elector certificates that were presented to the National Archives claiming that Donald Trump won the state and not Joe Biden.
In the state of Michigan, Attorney General Dana Nessel filed eight felony charges on July 18 against 16 Republicans—most of whom are leading figures in the state Republican Party apparatus—for their role in attempting to reverse the election result in Michigan, where Biden defeated Trump by 150,000 votes.
In the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, a plot to kidnap and kill the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, was revealed when the FBI arrested 14 men, all of whom were Trump supporters, mostly members of a right-wing militia called the Wolverine Watchmen. The men, who prepared to use explosives and engage in a gunfight with Whitmer’s security service as part of the kidnap plot, accused the governor of “tyranny” and planned to put her on trial and execute her for “treason.”