Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis speaks during a news conference after handing out RICO indictments on August 14, 2023, in Atlanta, Georgia. | Source: Joe Raedle / Getty
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis rang in her 52nd birthday in part by providing a brief glimpse into her experience prosecuting Donald Trump, who has not only attacked her relentlessly since she charged him and 18 others with alleged RICO violations but also whose supporters have willingly carried that hateful mantle for controversial the president.
Willis spoke Tuesday during a private fundraiser that doubled as a birthday party where she both poked fun at and opened up about the attacks that are many times racist in nature.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which obtained recordings from the closed-door gathering, Willis provided a moment of levity by mocking Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that she had an affair with a teenage gang member.
In the days leading up to Trump’s RICO indictment on Aug. 14, the front-runner for the Republican Party’s nomination for president called Willis a “young racist” before making the salacious claim.
“There’s a young racist in Atlanta…They say she was after a certain gang and she ended up having an affair with the head of the gang or a gang member,” Trump said at the time.
More than two months later, Willis — without saying Trump’s name — joked about all the names she’s been called while acknowledging those incendiary comments as being completely false.
“I think the craziest is I was sleeping with a gang-banger,” Willis told attendees. “I’m like, a 17-year-old? Like, what? I like them old! What are you talking about?”
All jokes aside, Willis also admitted that while the attacks are hateful, they won’t deter her from doing the job he was elected to do.
“If you are a leader, you’re going to be attacked,” Willis also said. “There are some days I’m human and I’m really angry or I’m hurt that somebody would tell a bold-faced lie on me.”
Willis said later: “You have these personal moments, when you’re like, ‘Why am I being personally attacked and all I’m out here trying to do is my job?’ And in the reading of that Scripture, what it told me is you ain’t special. That if you are a leader and you’re put in a position where people are going to lie on you, and they’re going to attack you, you have to still do what is the mission. And the mission here is we keep society safe. That everyone is equal. And that the law is protected.”
One of the people behind the attacks is Trump RICO co-defendant Harrison Floyd, the leader of the Black Voices for Trump group who stands accused of helping harass Black election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea Arshaye “Shaye” Moss, and coerce them into admitting to election fraud in Georgia that absolutely never existed.
Harrison has been busy taunting Willis with a disrespectful social media meme and claims that her RICO case is the result of her “chasing clout.”
To be sure, America has a rich history of trying to silence Black elected officials like Willis.
“These events have been shown to be a form of ‘white backlash’ working to keep Black officeholders out of power and their constituents powerless without representation,” Rodney Coates, Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at Miami University, wrote in an op-ed.
That sentiment is particularly true when it comes to Black prosecutors who are women, who have to bear the extra burden of not just racist attacks but also those along gender lines. When Trump is factored into that equation, those circumstances are exacerbated, according to Bev-Freda Jackson, an adjunct professorial lecturer at the American University School of Public Affairs.
“Though Black women share the same responsibility as their white counterparts – enforcing the law and deciding who gets charged with what crime – many of their attempts to eliminate perceived structural racism and establish criminal justice reforms are often at odds with traditional tough-on-crime policies,” Jackson wrote in the days after Willis indicted Trump in August.
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