Georgia’s Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has issued a lengthy response to House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who recently requested a variety of insider details from Willis on her criminal investigation that resulted in conspiracy charges against 19 individuals including former President Donald Trump. Willis broadly rebuffed Jordan’s requests.
The alleged conspiracy involved targeting by Trump and allies of his of the 2020 election results from Georgia, where Joe Biden nabbed a narrow victory that was repeatedly upheld by various investigations. Jordan, meanwhile, paid lip service in his earlier demands to Willis to various conspiracy theories surrounding her eventual charges against Trump, centering on the idea that the former president and current presidential candidate is the victim of what’s essentially political targeting. There is, however, simply no evidence that this case against Trump has been handled in a substantially different procedural manner than other charges and cases from Willis and similarly positioned prosecutors — and Willis blasted the implication that Trump should be treated differently because of his status.
“The basic premise of your letter is wrong,” Willis said. “The criminal defendant about which you express concern was fully aware of the existence of the criminal investigation being conducted by the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office at the time he announced his candidacy for President. I have no doubt that many Americans are the subject of criminal investigations and prosecutions at any given moment. An announcement of a candidacy for elected office, whether President of the United States, Congress, or state or local office, is not and cannot be a bar to criminal investigation or prosecution. Any notion to the contrary is offensive to our democracy and to the fundamental principle that all people are equal before the law.”
In the course of her letter, she spoke to various principles that she argued weighed on the situation, including the principle of leaving various governmental powers to states and the precept for Congress to generally stay out of law enforcement. She contended that circumstances warranting exceptions to these principles had simply not been established and characterized what Jordan was attempting to do as “illegal.” She did provide some direct responses to his earlier questions, explaining, for instance, some of the work to uplift local communities that Willis and her team have undertaken with federal grants.
