Tag: Fani Willis

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Crime GOP

Fani Willis Swats Down ‘Ignorant’ Jim Jordan In Blistering Letter: ‘You Are Abusing Your Authority’

Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis put Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) on full blast with a letter she sent him Wednesday addressing his insistence that she needs to appear before Congress and explain why she has brought criminal charges against former president Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants for attempting to overturn 2020 election results in the Peach State.

Jordan has repeatedly claimed that the House Judiciary Committee he chairs “has the constitutional authority to conduct oversight” of Willis and her prosecutions, even though he has failed to make clear what federal law gives him such power.

In her letter, Willis accused Jordan of being “ignorant” and referencing a recent Fox News appearance in which he bragged he’s “trying to stop this stuff” taking place in Georgia.

A charitable explanation of your correspondence is that you are ignorant of the United States and Georgia Constitutions and codes. A more troubling explanation is that you are abusing your authority as Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary to attempt to obstruct and interfere with a Georgia criminal prosecution. See O.C.G.A. § 16-10-24. Indeed, you confessed to this motivation on Mark Levin’s September 10, 2023, show: when discussing one of my office’s active prosecutions. you boasted, “We’re trying to get all the answers, but we’re trying to stop this stuff as well” (emphasis added). While you may enjoy immunity under the United States Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, that does not make your behavior any less offensive to the rule of law.

Willis also let Jordan know that she isn’t about to let him interfere with her prosecution of Trump and the others who are accused of violating Georgia’s law against racketeering.

As the person chosen by the citizens of Fulton County to be their District Attorney, I serve them, and my team and I are exceptionally busy. We have already written a letter—which I have attached again for your reference–explaining why the legal positions you advance are meritless. Nothing you’ve said in your latest letter changes that fact. As I have explained, your requests implicate significant. well recognized confidentiality interests related to an ongoing criminal matter, as well as serious constitutional concerns regarding federalism and separation of powers.

Jordan and others in the GOP are desperate to derail the multiple criminal investigations of Trump and his co-conspirators. But they can’t, and that terrifies them because they know Trump’s crimes reflect badly on them, too.

Thank goodness for strong, unwavering people like Fani Willis.

 

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Crime Donald Trump Elections GOP

Fani Willis Claps Back Hard At Jim Jordan: ‘You Lack A Basic Understanding Of The Law’

Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis has had quite enough of the petty threats and other distractions from House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), and she’s responding to his childish actions by reminding him that his knowledge of the law is tenuous at best.

Jordan has repeatedly accused Willis of trying to “interfere” in the 2024 election by charging former president Donald Trump as part of a racketeering conspiracy to overturn the results of balloting in the Peach State as part of the 2020 election, which Trump lost in an electoral landslide.

Focusing on a letter Jordan sent in August, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, Willis accused the congressman of using “inaccurate information and misleading statements” for his own political gain.

“Its obvious purpose is to obstruct a Georgia criminal proceeding and to advance outrageous misrepresentations,” Willis said in response to Jordan’s letter. “As I make clear below, there is no justification in the Constitution for Congress to interfere with a state criminal matter, as you attempt to do.”

Willis also noted that Jordan was legally ignorant.

“Your letter makes clear that you lack a basic understanding of the law, its practice and the ethical obligations of attorneys generally and prosecutors specifically.”

It should be noted that Jordan never sat for the bar exam in his home state and has never actually practiced law, as MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell noted in a brutal takedown of the Ohio Republican earlier this year.

“An Ohioan who is a graduate of Capital University Law School, but has never passed the bar exam – so is not a lawyer – Congressman Jim Jordan got a reply to his letter from Harvard Law School graduate Alvin Bragg, the district attorney of Manhattan.”

“Alvin Bragg’s reply letter to Jim Jordan is the single most humiliating letter ever received by a chairman of the House Judiciary Committee – every one of whom has known much more about the law than Jim Jordan.”

Jim Jordan is a sycophantic jackass who wants to advance his political career when he isn’t busy serving as Donald Trump’s full-time fluffer. He’s an embarrassment to his party, the Congress, and the United States.

 

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Crime Donald Trump Elections

Nervous Trump Resorts To Desperate Move In Attempt To Keep Georgia DA From Indicting Him

Nervous that he’s about to be indicted yet again, this time in the state of Georgia for attempting to overturn 2020 election results in the Peach State, failed former president Donald Trump is having his attorneys try a legal maneuver that reeks of desperation.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, lawyers for the disgraced ex-president filed an emergency appeal with the Georgia Supreme Court in which they argue that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should be barred from issuing any new indictments against their client.

The motion filed on Thursday asks Georgia’s highest court to put a halt to any ongoing proceedings “related to and flowing from the special purpose grand jury’s investigation until this matter can be resolved.” This would include any consideration of a possible indictment for alleged criminal meddling in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election by one of two regular Fulton grand juries that were seated on Tuesday.

Trump’s attorneys — Drew Findling, Marissa Goldberg and Jennifer Little — acknowledged that such a petition filed before Georgia’s highest court is typically a long shot. But they said “extraordinary circumstances” justify it now.

According to the motion, “Even in an extraordinarily novel case of national significance, one would expect matters to take their normal procedural course within a reasonable time. But nothing about these processes have been normal or reasonable. And the all-but-unavoidable conclusion is that the anomalies below are because petitioner is President Donald J. Trump.”

The filing also contends that Georgia’s statute for special grand juries is too vague, arguing, “(Trump) now sits on a precipice. A regular Fulton County grand jury could return an indictment any day that will have been based on a report and predicate investigative process that were wholly without authority.”

Of course, such an argument could be made if and when Trump is convicted and appeals the process that led to him being charged in the first place. The fact that he’s doing so prematurely suggests he know that state charges such as those he may face in Georgia cannot be pardoned by a sympathetic president or dismissed by U.S. attorney general he might appoint if he happens to win another term in office. Only the governor of Georgia could issue a pardon, and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) has been critical of Trump, who has also attacked the governor on numerous occasions for failing to seize ballot boxes in the state and declare him the winner.

Willis is expected to announce any criminal charges against Trump as soon as August.

 

Categories
Crime Donald Trump Elections

Letter From Georgia DA Seems To Indicate When She’ll Announce Donald Trump’s Indictment

A letter submitted by Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis to government officials seems to indicate that she will announce the indictment of failed one-term, twice-impeached former president Donald Trump in August for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election in the Peach State.

The Atlanta Journal- Constitution reports the letter, sent to  Fulton Superior Court’s chief judge Ural Glanville, informs the judge that a larger portion of the DA’s staff will be working remotely during a three-week period that ends on August 18.

“This remote work will reduce the number of Fulton County District Attorney’s office staff in the Fulton County Courthouse and Government Center by approximately 70 percent,” Willis writes.

Those dates also coincide with when the grand jury investigating Trump and some of his associates plans to convene and begin its deliberations.

The Journal-Constitution also notes:

In the letter, which was first reported by The New York Times, Willis also requested that Fulton judges not schedule trials and in-person hearings during the weeks of Aug. 7 and Aug. 14. The letter is yet another strong signal that Willis is planning to seek charges against major players who aggressively questioned Georgia’s 2020 election results, including Trump.

The most damning evidence against Trump is a phone call he made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which he urged the elections chief to “find” over 11,000 votes for him so he could declare himself the winner in the state.

The disgraced former president has already been indicted in Manhattan on charges of falsifying business records and is under investigation by Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith for allegedly taking classified documents from the White House and storing them at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

 

Categories
Crime Donald Trump Elections

Legal Expert: Trump Provided Proof Of ‘Criminal Intent’ For Georgia Prosecutor At Town Hall

Amidst all of the other crazy things he said at Wednesday evening’s CNN town hall, failed former president Donald Trump also gave Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis new evidence she can use against the ex-president as she considers whether or not to indict him for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Legal analyst and Brookings Governance senior fellow Norm Eisen was a guest on CNN’s “News Central” Friday, and he told host host Jim Scuitto that Trump provided proof of his “criminal intent.”

During the town hall, moderator Kaitlan Collins asked Trump, “Given the fact that there are indictments expected to come in that case this summer — is that a call you would make again today?”

The indicted former president replied, “Yeah, I called questioning the election. I thought it was a rigged election. I thought it had a lot of problems. Listen to this: There are like seven lawyers on the call…we’re having a normal call, nobody said, ‘Oh, gee, he shouldn’t have said that.'”

Collins fact-checked Trump, noting, “You asked him to find the votes.”

That led Trump to begin shouting: “I didn’t ask him to find anything! I said you owe me votes because the election was rigged!”

Eisen was asked by Sciutto, “Tell me how that impacts the investigation in Georgia.”

The attorney and ethics expert replied, “It’s the most important kind of proof for a prosecutor, Jim. Intent proof. Whatever he believed, once the election had been certified, he can’t demand that the Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger just find 11,780 votes. It’s vigilante justice. Think of it this way: If I believed the bank owed me $11, 780, and I went in there and threatened the teller, ‘Give me my $11,780’ — even if I believe it belongs to me — you can’t do that, and you can’t do that in an election.”

Sciutto: “You can’t say ‘You owe me that money;’ you can’t say, ‘You owe me those votes.'”

Willis is expected to announce whether she will indict Trump sometime this summer.