In Georgia, the investigation against Donald Trump could collapse if the Democratic prosecutor loses her election

Since 2020, a Democratic prosecutor has led an investigation against Donald Trump over an attempted manipulation of the vote count. She is contesting her re-election at the polls on Tuesday, May 21, and thus puts the continuation of the investigation at stake, despite herself.

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Fulton County Prosecutor Fani Willis during her disqualification hearing at the Fulton County Courthouse on March 1, 2024. She was ultimately retained in her position.  (ALEX SLITZ/POOL)

In the United States, citizens elect their president, but also their sheriffs, their judges and their prosecutors. Fani Willis, the Fulton County prosecutor, will therefore not cut it. While stationed in the state of Georgia, she saw this southern state narrowly escape Donald Trump in 2020, by less than 12,000 votes.

The latter, furious, convinced that there had been fraud, and that his defeat could only be explained like that, then called his contact there, the Secretary of State of Georgia, a Republican, to ask him to “find the missing voices”. The conversation was recorded and transmitted to Washington Post : “We won this election in Georgia, he said, and there’s nothing wrong, you see, in saying that you recalculated! I just want to find 11,780 votes.”

Donald Trump had failed to make the Republican bend and, after the revelation in the American newspaper, prosecutor Fani Willis took up the case. She has since led a long investigation to find out whether Donald Trump, yes or no, tried to reverse the result of the presidential election.

This woman, currently in the campaign, is appearing before the voters for the first time since this affair. The issue behind it is not the least: what would happen if she was not re-elected? Fani Willis, without citing the Trump case in particular, made it clear what is at stake during a recent press conference in Atlanta: “There’s no one my office is going to treat below the law. But no one is above the law either. I don’t care if you’re rich, if you think you’re powerful, who is your daddy, what your political party is or how mean your supporters are I don’t care how many times they threaten me I’m here for justice.

The first deadline will take place on Tuesday May 21, 2024 for Fani Willis, during the Democratic primary. The final election will take place in November 2024, the same day as the presidential election.

Opposite the prosecutor, the Republican candidate is not just anyone. It is Courtney Kramer, whose mission is to overthrow her, aged 30, she is a lawyer and she is an unfailing supporter of Trump. She worked for him at the White House and on his campaign. He has no problem saying that the 2020 election was stolen and that Trump should have won.

For the moment, Fani Willis is far ahead in the polls. She raised much more money than her Republican rival, who is also little known. And Fulton County, where the election is being held, is overwhelmingly Democratic. But Fani Willis was weakened. She is accused by the Trumpists of leading a witch hunt, and also accused of having maintained an intimate relationship with an investigator mobilized on the case. It went so far that she had to justify herself in court. She was ultimately not removed from the case. Legal battle therefore and from tomorrow, electoral battle.


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