A Georgia prosecutor expected to indict Donald Trump within days for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state has responded to accusations by the former president’s campaign that she is too “incompetent,” “tainted” and “corrupt” to bring the case.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis told her staff in a Wednesday email obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that a TV ad alleging political bias and unprofessional conduct on her part was “derogatory and false.”
“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 the coming days, weeks or months,” Willis said in the missive addressed to members of the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office.
“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 added.
“We have a job to do. In this office, we prosecute based on the facts and the law. The law is non-partisan.”
The Trump campaign ad highlights reports that Willis oversaw a 60% spike in murders during her first year in office and that a judge had barred her from prosecuting current Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones before last year’s election because she had held a fundraiser for his Democratic opponent.
The commercial also claimed the Atlanta DA “got caught hiding a relationship with a gang member she was prosecuting,” referencing a former client of hers who had connections to a racketeering case against the rapper Young Thug.
“This is not her character, this is not who she is,” YSL Mondo, who cofounded the Young Stoner Life record label with Young Thug, told Rolling Stone in January. “I done had auntie-to-nephew, mother-to-son type of talks with her. I know this not her character. This is what made me start looking at [the YSL case] like I know it’s bigger than just her. It’s politics behind this s—. It’s other people that’s behind her pulling strings.”
Mondo said Willis, whose father was a criminal defense attorney and former Black Panther, had been a “great attorney” who helped him secure a probationary deal on an aggravated assault charge in 2019.
He added that they also had a “cool relationship” while preparing for his defense but haven’t talked since the conclusion of the case.
The Trump ad says Willis is President “Biden’s newest lackey” and calls her and other prosecutors who have brought charges against the former president “The Fraud Squad.”
The 45th president’s campaign spent $79,000 for the TV ad to run on cable news channels in Atlanta from Aug. 9 to 13, the AJC reported.
Trump, 77, took the attacks against Willis further on Tuesday during a rally in New Hanmpshire, saying: “There’s a young woman, a young racist, in Atlanta, and they say, I guess, they say she was after a certain gang, she ended up having an affair with the head of the gang or a gang member.”
“This is a person who wants to indict me,” he added.
Willis is reportedly preparing to bring witnesses before a grand jury in Georgia next week before potentially slapping the former president with racketeering and other charges — in what would be Trump’s fourth indictment this year.
Special counsel Jack Smith has twice hit the ex-president with federal indictments for allegedly retaining classified documents and lying to officials who sought them and for conspiring with others to throw out presidential election results.
In the wake of his 2020 loss, Trump made several phone calls to Peach State election officials to try to reverse his electoral loss to Biden, at one point asking whether Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger could “find” 11,780 votes for him.
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg indicted Trump earlier this year on 34 counts of business fraud for allegedly falsifying records to conceal “hush money” payments to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016.
The other member of the so-called “Fraud Sqaud,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, has pursued fraud claims against the Trump Organization but has yet to announce criminal charges.