Sixteen months into Joe Biden’s presidency — 17 come June 20 — former President Donald Trump continues to be subject of multiple investigations, from New York State Attorney General Letitia James to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s January 6 select committee to Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis. Trump has been angrily railing against Willis a lot recently, which according to Vanity Fair’s Bess Levin, shows that her investigation of his activities in Georgia following the 2020 election is really getting to him.
“Is Trump actually in legal peril? If his history is anything to go by, it’s hard to say yes, overwhelming evidence notwithstanding,” Levin writes in her May 30 column. “But he sure seems upset about Willis’ work, having bleated on Truth Social over the weekend: ‘The young, ambitious, Radical Left Democrat ‘Prosecutor’ from Georgia, who is presiding over one of the most Crime Ridden and Corrupt places in the USA, Fulton County, has put together a Grand Jury to investigate an absolutely ‘PERFECT’ phone call to the Secretary of State. Many lawyers, from both sides, were knowingly on the call. I also assumed it was taped. I called to fight a Rigged & Stolen Election, and they go after me instead of the people that Rigged and Stole it. God Bless America!’”
Levin adds, “At a rally in Texas in January, Trump similarly attacked Willis, along with two other Black prosecutors without mentioning any of the investigators by name, telling his supporters the Fulton County D.A., New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg are ‘vicious, horrible people’ and claiming ‘they’re racists, and they’re very sick; they’re mentally sick.’ Then, he encouraged his followers to launch ‘the biggest protest we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta, and elsewhere,’ if ‘these radical racist vicious prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal’ — a demand former prosecutors believe could ‘backfire legally’ on him given it sounds a lot like an attempt to obstruct justice.”
On January 2, 2021 — only four days before the January 6 insurrection — Trump infamously demanded that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “find” him enough votes for him to win the Peach State. But it was Biden, not Trump, who legitimately won Georgia in 2020, and Raffensperger, a conservative Republican, refused to go along with Trump — which is why Trump hates him so vehemently.
Levin notes what former federal prosecutor Joyce White Vance, who is often featured as a legal analyst on MSNBC, has had to say about Willis’ investigation. Vance recently told MSNBC’s Katie Phang that Willis needs “proof of the former president’s state of mind,” stressing that Trump was asking Raffensperger to “find him the specific number of votes that he needs” — not urging Raffensperger to conduct a fact-finding investigation, but to find him a “specific” number of votes.
Trump’s exact words to Raffensperger were, “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.” And that demand, Vance told Phang, is “pretty good evidence of criminal intent walking into it.”
“Donald Trump has a long, robust history of getting away with every shady, underhanded, wildly unethical, likely criminal thing he’s ever done in his life,” Levin observes. “Whether it’s stiffing contractors he owes money to, paying a porn star to keep quiet about their alleged affair, or inciting a violent riot in a botched attempt to overturn the results of an election he lost, the comeuppance that would befall other people never seems to come for the ex-president. But according to (Vance), the guy’s luck may be running out thanks to the state of Georgia.”