Georgia DA Says Trump Trial Could Last Beyond Election

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis says former President Trump's trial for allegedly interfering in the 2020 election in Georgia will probably still be underway when the 2024 election rolls around. "I believe in that case there will be a trial. I believe the trial will take many months," she said at the Washington Post Live Global Women's Summit on Wednesday. "And I don't expect that we will conclude until the winter or the very early part of 2025." She said that when making decisions about what cases to bring, her office doesn't "consider any election cycle or an election season." The election, she said, "does not go into the calculus."

Hours earlier, Willis applied for an emergency request for a protective order to prevent leaks of evidence. She called Monday night's leak of video statements from four co-defendants who have pleaded guilty in the case disappointing but not surprising. She denied that her office was involved in leaking the videos, which had been shared with defense lawyers. The emergency request states that the "release of these confidential video recordings is clearly intended to intimidate witnesses." and "constitutes indirect communication about the facts of this case with codefendants and witnesses." In one leaked video, former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis said that after the election, Trump's deputy chief of staff told her, "The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances."

A spokesman for Rudy Giuliani—one of Trump' 18 co-defendants—said in a statement to Politico that Willis' admission that the case will stretch past the election shows the case is part of the "Democrat Party and permanent Washington political class's attempt to keep Donald Trump out of the White House in 2024." In her remarks at the Washington Post event Tuesday, Willis said she had received more than 100 threats, many of them racist, since launching the investigation. The elected Democrat said that as a prosecutor, she is not partisan. "I am a prosecutor's prosecutor," she said, per the New York Times. "I will put you in jail for life and have a real good night's sleep about it." (More Georgia indictment stories.)