Fani Willis wants the historic RICO trial against former President Donald Trump to start in the midst of the 2024 election. The Fulton County District Attorney has set her eyes on a start date of August 2024, which would be three months ahead of the election.
Trump’s lawyers have argued that if Willis gets her way, the trial would be “the most effective election interference in the history of the United States.”
Willis recently countered that notion by stating that, in the past, elections have not prevented a person from being charged or prosecuted in court.
“If the prosecutor finds that they violated the law, they have an ethical duty to bring forth charges and so this is a silly notion to me that because one runs from office that your criminal case would stop,” Willis said in an interview with AP.
In the interview, Willis also spoke about the possibility of Trump being incarcerated in Georgia if convicted. Without naming any defendant in the case, she revealed that the charges can bring heavy consequences for those who are convicted.
“You can look at the statutes that we charged. It’s a very serious case. And there are consequences to violating serious laws,” she said.
The RICO case centers around the 2020 election probe when Trump asked former Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger during a phone call to help him secure over 11,000 votes, the amount in which he trailed Joe Biden in Georgia.
During a recorded call that took place on Jan. 2, 2021, Trump told Raffensperger, “All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state.”
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