Fulton County DA says indictment announcement coming this summer in Trump probe

Published 6:07 pm Monday, April 24, 2023

ATLANTA — Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Monday said she would announce this summer whether former President Donald Trump and his allies would be charged with crimes related to alleged interference in Georgia’s 2020 election.

Willis revealed the timetable in a letter to local law enforcement in which she asked them to be ready for “heightened security and preparedness” because she predicted her announcement “may provoke a significant public reaction.”

In the letters, Willis said she will announce possible criminal indictments between July 11 and Sept. 1, sending one of the strongest signals yet that she’s on the verge of trying to obtain an indictment against Trump and his supporters.

“Please accept this correspondence as notice to allow you sufficient time to prepare the Sheriff’s Office and coordinate with local, state and federal agencies to ensure that our law enforcement community is ready to protect the public,” Willis wrote to Fulton Sheriff Patrick Labat.

Similar letters were hand delivered to Darin Schierbaum, Atlanta’s chief of police, and Matthew Kallmyer, director of the Atlanta-Fulton County Emergency Management Agency.

“We have seen in recent years that some may go outside of public expressions of opinion that are protected by the First Amendment to engage in acts of violence that will endanger the safety of those we are sworn to protect. As leaders, it is incumbent upon us to prepare,” Willis told the metro Atlanta leaders.

Trump has called for mass demonstrations in response to overreach from prosecutors — triggering concerns about violent unrest not unlike the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection he promoted.

Norm Eisen, a former ethics czar under President Barack Obama who has co-authored a Brookings Institution report on the Fulton probe, said Willis’ letter makes it sound like she will certainly seek charges against the former president.

“It’s hard to imagine how Willis would announce that she will be filing charges without including Donald Trump,” Eisen said. “While she does not have the former president’s name in her letter, the evidence and the applicable law in Georgia point to the substantial likelihood that Donald Trump and his principal co-conspirators will be included when she follows through on the plans she confirms in this letter.”

This isn’t the first time law enforcement in Atlanta has been ramped up in response to the Fulton DA’s Trump investigation.

Last May, as a Fulton judge selected members of the special grand jury, the Fulton Sheriff’s office blocked off vehicle traffic on the streets surrounding the courthouse and stationed deputies with guns on many street corners with semi-automatic rifles. Snipers patrolled nearby rooftops as helicopters circled overhead. Law enforcement also deployed a SWAT team to protect jurors as they returned to their cars at the end of the day.

Six months later, before jurors interviewed Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, they assigned heavily armed officers to guard the courthouse steps and brought in a bomb-sniffing dog.

Willis herself travels with a security detail and has equipped some members of her team with bulletproof vests and keychains with panic buttons.

For Trump’s arraignment last month in Manhattan, authorities erected barricades and shut down streets surrounding the courthouse. The police issued a stand-ready order for roughly 35,000 officers in the region as well as city, state and federal law enforcement agencies.

About an hour before Trump’s afternoon court appearance, a number of Manhattan courtrooms were closed, according to published reports. There was also a total shutdown of the route the former president took to the courthouse from Trump Tower and from the courthouse to board his plane at LaGuardia Airport.

The Fulton sheriff’s office referred any questions about the letter to the DA’s office. A spokesman for APD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.