Politics
Georgia prosecutor asks for FBI protection after Trump rails against probe
The Georgia prosecutor looking into former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results is asking the FBI for protection after Trump called for protests of the “racist prosecutors” investigating him.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis sent a letter to the FBI’s Atlanta field office on Sunday requesting that the bureau conduct a risk assessment of the county courthouse and government center, as well as provide protective resources including “intelligence and federal agents” as her office ramps up its own investigation of the former president.
“We must work together to keep the public safe and ensure that we do not have a tragedy in Atlanta similar to what happened at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,” Willis wrote in the letter, which was published by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “My staff and I will not be influenced or intimidated by anyone as this investigation moves forward.”
During a rally in Conroe, Texas, on Saturday night, Trump railed against ongoing probes into his efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
“If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere, because our country and our elections are corrupt,” Trump said.
Earlier this month, Willis requested a special grand jury to aid her investigation because of what she called a lack of cooperation from witnesses, including the state’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. Willis launched the inquiry after Trump, in a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call, urged Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” that made up Biden’s winning margin in the state.
Last week a judge granted Willis’s request for a grand jury, which will be impaneled beginning on May 2.
Meanwhile, the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot continues to subpoena witnesses, including Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and other attorneys involved in pushing baseless election fraud claims. The panel recently asked Trump’s daughter Ivanka to cooperate voluntarily in its probe.
On Jan. 19, the Supreme Court denied the former president’s request to prevent the select committee from obtaining White House records concerning Trump’s activities leading up to and during the insurrection.
And New York Attorney General Letitia James said earlier this month that she has uncovered “significant evidence” of fraud in her ongoing investigations into the Trump Organization’s business practices.
