‘People are facing prison sentences’: Georgia DA suggests election probe unearthed ‘serious’ crimes
The Georgia prosecutor looking into former President Donald Trump and his allies’ efforts to overturn the 2020 election in her state indicated that the probe is unearthing serious crimes.
‘The allegations are very serious. If indicted and convicted, people are facing prison sentences,’ Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis said in an interview with The Washington Post published Thursday.
The interview shed new light on the probe’s timeline, with Willis saying it would be paused in the run-up to the November election and interviews with witnesses would be wrapped up by the end of the year.
‘I didn’t want people to claim that this was some political stunt that we were doing to impact the election,’ Willis, a Democrat, said.
Fani T. Willis told The Washington Post Thursday, ‘The allegations are very serious. If indicted and convicted, people are facing prison sentences’
The investigation will enter a quiet period starting October 7, a month and a day before the midterms. There was a similar quiet period ahead of the state’s primaries.
A special grand jury has been convened since the spring as part of the investigation.
‘We are going to be done calling witnesses by the end of this year. Period,’ she told The Post.
Yet to be decided is if one of those witnesses will be Trump.
‘A decision is going to have to be made,’ she told the paper, ‘and I imagine it’s going to be made late this fall.’
After interviews with witnesses are completed the grand jury will submit a report to Willis on whether charges should be brought – a decision Willis will make.
At least 17 people have been named as targets in the probe – Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani and the 16 Trump supporters who agreed to be Georgia’s fake electors in a scheme that was halted with Vice President Mike Pence’s refusal to pick-and-choose slates of electors when he chaired the joint session of Congress to certify the election on January 6.
Seventeen individuals – including former President Donald Trump’s (pictured) ex-lawyer Rudy Giuliani and the 16 pro-Trump Georgia fake electors – have been named as targets of the probe
Lawyers for Giuliani and the 16 electors have denied any wrongdoing.
The electors met as part of a contingency plan as a court ruled on the legitimacy of Georgia’s vote, lawyers for the faux electors have also said.
In the interview, Willis would not discuss any of the targets by name, nor would she say if she’s willing to charge the former president.
She also indicated she was happy with the probe’s progress despite some witnesses, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, refusing to appear before the grand jury.
‘I’m pleased with where it is,’ she said. ‘I think we’re moving along at a really good speed.’
Willis indicated that she was, at first, reluctant to open the investigation.
She was only on the job for several days in January 2021 when The Post broke the story that Trump had called Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and urged him to ‘find’ the exact number of votes it would have taken for him to have beaten now President Joe Biden.
‘I understood that if this occurred in Fulton County, it is serious enough that it needed to be looked at,’ she said in the interview, conducted from her office Tuesday.