berg80
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- Oct 28, 2017
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Normally, the primary question after congressional revelations like those we have heard would be whether there would be federal charges, as in Watergate. Here, the Justice Department may be contemplating possible actions, but Ms. Willis is further along. Her flurry of target letters to Georgians who formed an alternate slate of 2020 presidential electors strongly suggests she is considering charges.
Ms. Willis has operated with calculated urgency since she opened her investigation in February 2021. She has moved from building a prosecution team and conducting voluntary interviews to convening a special grand jury to issuing those target letters (at least 16 of them) to the Republican electors who, despite Mr. Trump’s election loss in the state, covertly met to cast votes for him and submit an alternate electoral slate on Dec. 14.
Target letters typically mark the progression of an inquiry by notifying recipients that they are under active investigation. They also often implicitly push those receiving them to flip — that is, to cooperate against others higher up in a conspiracy early, while the best deals are available. As she proceeds, Ms. Willis has made no secret that she is looking at the man at the top: Mr. Trump.
Even before the hearings, Ms. Willis had two pieces of compelling evidence against the former president. The first was the recording of the conversation on Jan. 2, 2021, in which he urged Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find 11,780 votes.” The second was the phony electoral slate that Trump electors sent to Congress and the National Archives on Dec. 14. No matter what Mr. Trump or his allies may have believed about the election results, they were not permitted to demand the creation of nonexistent votes or to forge official documents.
www.nytimes.com
Ms. Willis has operated with calculated urgency since she opened her investigation in February 2021. She has moved from building a prosecution team and conducting voluntary interviews to convening a special grand jury to issuing those target letters (at least 16 of them) to the Republican electors who, despite Mr. Trump’s election loss in the state, covertly met to cast votes for him and submit an alternate electoral slate on Dec. 14.
Target letters typically mark the progression of an inquiry by notifying recipients that they are under active investigation. They also often implicitly push those receiving them to flip — that is, to cooperate against others higher up in a conspiracy early, while the best deals are available. As she proceeds, Ms. Willis has made no secret that she is looking at the man at the top: Mr. Trump.
Even before the hearings, Ms. Willis had two pieces of compelling evidence against the former president. The first was the recording of the conversation on Jan. 2, 2021, in which he urged Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find 11,780 votes.” The second was the phony electoral slate that Trump electors sent to Congress and the National Archives on Dec. 14. No matter what Mr. Trump or his allies may have believed about the election results, they were not permitted to demand the creation of nonexistent votes or to forge official documents.
Opinion | This Georgia Prosecutor Has Donald Trump in Her Sights, and She’s Not Stopping
The Jan. 6 hearings have turbocharged Fani Willis’s investigation.
