Fani Willis is the first Black woman to lead the Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney (DA) office. And in many people’s opinion, she’s the last and maybe the best hope for prosecuting former President Donald Trump for his role in attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Willis has been slowly building her grand jury investigation. She’s sent subpoenas to two of Trump’s top aides—Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina—and on July 15, the powerhouse DA sent “target” letters to several top Republican officials to inform them of upcoming indictments for their roles in a fake elector scheme in the state.
Tuesday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) reported that Willis widened the scope of her office’s investigation and informed nearly a dozen more fake Georgia electors that they could very well be prosecuted.
RELATED STORY: Georgia DA Fani Willis is on a mission as she sends ‘target’ letters to top Republicans
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According to AJC, court records show that 10 more GOP electors have received letters from the DA’s office—Mark Amick, Joseph Brannan, Brad Carver, Vicki Consiglio, John Downey, Carolyn Fish, Kay Godwin, Cathy Latham, Shawn Still, and C.B. Yadav.
As we reported last Friday, letters were also sent to state Sen. Burt Jones, the GOP candidate for lieutenant governor; state Sen. Brandon Beach; and David Shafer, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party.
Attorneys representing the 10 electors and Shafer filed a motion to block their clients from subpoenas, citing them as “unreasonable and oppressive.” They claim that the prosecutors informed them in June that the 11 self-proclaimed electors were “suddenly targets.”
Attorneys Holly Pierson and Kimberly Bourroughs Debrow wrote:
“The abrupt, unsupportable and public elevation of all eleven nominee electors’ status wrongfully converted them from witnesses who were cooperating voluntarily and prepared to testify in the Grand jury to persecuted targets of it.”
In an interview with NBC News, Willis indicated she had not ruled out forcing Trump himself to testify.
"We’ll just have to see where the investigation leads us. … I think that people thought that we came into this as some kind of game. This is not a game at all. What I am doing is very serious. It’s very important work. And we’re going to do our due diligence and making sure that we look at all aspects of the case.”
But what isn’t clear is how the “target” letters play into Willis’ overall investigation. She has two options, according to Yahoo News legal sources. One, she charges the fake electors with “false writing,” as they filed fake documents alleging to be electors. Or two, she uses the false writing charge as a “predicate act” in order to net Trump in the larger scheme of tampering with an election as connected to his infamous call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, prodding him to “find” enough votes to flip the election results.
