ATLANTA — The Fulton County, Georgia district attorney conducting a criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump has asked for an FBI risk assessment of the courthouse in downtown Atlanta, citing “alarming” rhetoric used by Mr Trump. at a rally in Texas last weekend.
Fulton County Prosecutor Fani T. Willis plans to appoint a special grand jury in May to investigate allegations that Mr. Trump and his allies attempted to improperly manipulate the results of Georgia’s 2020 presidential election. to influence. The investigation investigates, among other things, a phone call Mr. Trump made to Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to pressure him to “find 11,780 votes” — the margin by which Mr. Trump lost the state.
Ms. Willis, a Democrat, made her request for a security assessment on Sunday in a letter to JC Hacker, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s field office in Atlanta. Ms Willis said she and her staff had “already made adjustments to address security concerns in the course of the investigation, taking into account communications we have received from individuals dissatisfied with our commitment to performing our duties. “
But she also noted that, at his meeting in Conroe, Texas, on Saturday, Mr. Trump “made multiple references to investigations known to relate to his activities.” Ms. Willis’s request to the FBI was previously reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Speaking at the rally, Trump said he would consider pardoning people charged with the attack on the National Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, if he is re-elected in 2024, and he told supporters to launch protests in Atlanta. and New York — where he also faces civil and criminal investigations into his company — if prosecutors “do something wrong.”
Ms. Willis noted that Mr. Trump told the crowd, “If these radical, vicious racist accusers do something wrong or illegal, I hope in this country we will have the biggest protests we’ve ever had in Washington, DC, in New York. York, in Atlanta and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt.”
She also noted that Mr Trump said the investigations related to “prosecution misconduct” and said the prosecutors involved were “cruel, horrible people. They are racist and very sick. They are mentally ill.”
Ms. Willis is African American, as are Letitia James, the New York Attorney General conducting a civil investigation into Mr. Trump, and Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney who inherited the New York criminal investigation from his predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., who is white.
Ms. Willis said the rhetoric was “alarming” in light of Mr Trump raising the possibility of pardoning the Jan. 6 protesters.
“We need to work together to keep the public safe and make sure we don’t have a tragedy in Atlanta, similar to what happened at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,” Ms. Willis wrote.