The slowest of the many criminal investigations into Donald Trump could prove the most consequential—and imminent.
An Atlanta prosecutor’s probe into the former president’s attempts to rig the 2020 election in Georgia is expected to shortly culminate in Trump’s third indictment—or his fourth, if Jack Smith indicts Trump again before Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
While any of the charges against Trump could land him in jail, the Atlanta case is especially damning and threatening.
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The basic facts are hard to dispute. Trump tried to pressure the state’s top elections official to “find 11,780” votes to flip the results on a recorded phone call. His campaign recruited fake electors who signed off on a failed bid to eventually replace real ones in Congress. And local Republicans snuck into a county elections office to tamper with voting equipment, as first uncovered by The Daily Beast.
Willis, who heard about Trump’s infamous call on her very first Monday morning commute into the office in 2021, launched a sprawling investigation almost immediately. As The Daily Beast previously reported, the newly elected DA explored racketeering charges and hired John E. Floyd, the guy who wrote the book on using RICO cases against mafia members. Her new team of prosecutors also considered false statement charges against Rudy Giuliani and others who spread conspiracy theories.
Last week, The Guardian confirmed that her prosecutors are still building a racketeering case—as well as a broader one for solicitation to election fraud.
The anticipated indictment has Atlanta on pins and needles, with current and former local politicians whispering rumors about when the big news will come. The Fulton County grand jury is expected to vote on criminal charges the first or second week of August, depending on whom you ask.
The DA hinted at the same in May when she outlined a plan to have 70 percent of her staff work remotely while grand juries are in session during the first half of August. According to The New York Times, she also requested that judges schedule no trials or in-person hearings for the weeks starting Aug. 7 and Aug. 14—a shocking halt of regular court business for the eighth-largest metro area in the country.
And there’s another sign of how soon the ax will fall: Trump’s growing desperation. In recent weeks, the former president keeps trying to make last-minute attempts to trash an explosive-yet-secret final report by a Fulton County special purpose grand jury last year that recommended Willis seek criminal indictments against all those who tried to meddle in Georgia’s elections.
The list is certain to include the former president—evident by his repeated attempts to scuttle the report. Although all nine justices on Georgia's Supreme Court rejected Trump’s request to shut down the investigation earlier this month, Trump’s lawyers revised their lawsuit to disqualify Willis by resorting to personal attacks that accuse her of using the Trump case to seek re-election—prompting the region’s chief judge last week to recuse every single judge in the county and kick it to a neighboring one.
At this point, whatever delay is holding back prosecutors appears to be directly related to Trump’s remorseful associates. In April, the former president’s fake electors started ratting each other out, according to the DA’s court filings.
If anything, the wait has actually strengthened her case.
Earlier this year, the Department of Justice made a decisive move when its lawyers took the formal stance that Trump was acting far outside the bounds of a president’s duties when he tried to cling to power after losing the election—a policy position that essentially strips him of any immunity claim he could try in, say, this Atlanta case.
And so, the countdown is on.
The DA has alerted local officials that she intends to announce charging decisions this summer, and that has kicked agencies into high gear. In the wake of the Jan. 6 mob violence in the nation’s capital, the metro area of Atlanta is even preparing for the possibility of civil unrest.
In June, the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office announced that its deputies were “traveling to New York and Miami to gather intel on security operations at court proceedings for former President Donald Trump.”
In Manhattan, the local DA is prosecuting Trump for paying off a porn star to keep quiet about their affair and spare his 2016 presidential campaign from potentially catastrophic embarrassment. When Trump was arraigned in April, visiting Fulton deputies would have seen how the New York Police Department erected fences that corralled protesters into a public park facing the courthouse, bailiffs surrounded the building, and Secret Service agents guarded a back street for Trump’s motorcade to slip in through a side entrance.
In Miami, where Trump was arraigned last month on federal charges of hoarding classified documents at his oceanside Florida mansion, local law enforcement similarly set up barricades and kept protesters standing at the sidelines. One lone man managed to slow down Trump’s motorcade for a brief moment after his court appearance there, but he was quickly tackled.
But Trump’s pressure campaign on Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger—both Republicans—as well as his subsequent relentless smears against Willis—a Democrat—has riled locals and actually brought them together.
“It was egregious,” said former county chairman John H. Eaves. “I know Brian Kemp, Brad Raffensperger, and Fani Willis. They are, generally speaking, good people. Each of them did their constitutional duty. Kudos to them.”
While there’s been plenty of speculation about Willis’ investigation, little is actually known in public. To legal observers, that is one of the main differences between the Manhattan DA’s case—which was laid out in a tell-all memoir before the indictment was even filed—and the DOJ’s Mar-a-Lago classified documents investigation, which was closely tracked by the nation’s largest newspapers. It’s taken this first-term prosecutor longer to start, but it’s strongly positioned to take off with speed.
“For the most part, Fani’s team has kept things close to the chest. It speaks to their professionalism,” Eaves said. “This is the major leagues. This is not a prosecution of a local felon. This is the prosecution of a former president. You need to make sure the t’s are crossed and i’s are dotted.”
“Her personal reputation is at stake,” he said. “You don’t want to mess this thing up.”
