As I wrote a couple of days ago, Fulton County (Georgia) officials are preparing for when D.A. Fani Willis makes her announcement on whether or not Donald Trump is being indicted. It’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that she will hand down an indictment so precautions are being taken at the courthouse.
In a statement issued late last night, a spokeswoman for the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office said the agency is coordinating with local, state and federal law enforcement to enhance security ahead of “high-profile legal proceedings” … #gapol https://t.co/mNA4wfKszb
— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) July 28, 2023
As a former president with a Secret Service detail as protection, obviously extra security precautions would be taken for Trump anyway. D.A. Willis is milking the potential indictment for all it’s worth. She’s also being responsible and advising other county officials about the timeline – she plans to make her announcement by September 1. Originally, she said she would likely do it in August. Right now it looks like she is waiting for a court hearing later in the month on a request from Team Trump to remove Fani Willis from the case and to set aside the evidence her office has gathered in the case which may indict Trump for election interference. This case goes back to the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Trump called and asked the Georgia Secretary of State to “find” more than 11,000 ballots cast for him so that he would be declared the winner of Georgia.
When Trump is indicted, as I am assuming he will be, he will have to turn himself in and at that time, Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat said that Trump will be treated the same as anyone else. That means he will be fingerprinted and have a mugshot taken, too. Who knows what his attorney will work out with the Georgia authorities when the time comes, but if he is subjected to taking a mugshot, it will be the first one he’s taken in his string of indictments. He didn’t get a mugshot taken in Manhattan or in Miami.
‘Unless somebody tells me differently, we are following our normal practices, and it doesn’t matter your status, we’ll have a mugshot ready for you,’ Labat told Atlanta’s WSB-TV Channel 2.
Labat wouldn’t say if he’d been in touch with the Secret Service, but told the TV outlet that local, county, state and federal law enforcement
Color me skeptical. I’ll be surprised if Labat follows through with his huffing and puffing. I can’t imagine Trump’s legal team agreeing to a mugshot that will immediately be leaked for all of Trump’s haters to enjoy.
Fani Willis is considered a tough cookie, a seasoned professional who is loaded for bear in the case against Trump. According to an opinion piece written by a reporter who covers Georgia politics and writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Trump and his team should come prepared.
The bulk of what most Americans know about Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (it’s pronounced “FAH-nee, by the way) is what former President Donald Trump has angrily said about her from the podium at his campaign rallies. Namely, Trump’s said she’s a “racist,” “lunatic,” “Marxist” district attorney, so crazed with political delusions that she’s coming after him over a “perfect phone call” to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
But what Trump will soon learn about Willis, and the rest of the world will, too, if she decides to file criminal charges against him and his associates involving election interference in Georgia, is that the Fulton County DA is well known in the state as a methodical, often ferocious prosecutor, not a “lunatic” anything.
She argued more than 100 murder cases to conviction during her 17-plus years as a staff lawyer in the Fulton County DA’s office before she ran to replace her boss, Paul Howard, in 2020.
She has also used Georgia’s racketeering statute to put everyone from schoolteachers to “gangbangers” behind bars. If the former president is indeed in her sights, she’s likely to use the multipronged strategy that’s worked for her plenty of times before.
Willis says she is ready.
It’s clear now that Willis is finally ready to move forward. We’ll know soon what she’s decided to do.
“The work is accomplished,” she told 11Alive over the weekend. “We’ve been working for 2 1/2 years. We’re ready to go.”
Now we wait and see what happens in Georgia.
Read the full article here