Georgia prosecutor asks FBI for security help after Trump rally comments
The district attorney for Fulton County, Georgia, asked the FBI on Sunday to assess security at her courthouse, in response to comments by former President Donald Trump taking aim at prosecutors investigating his business dealings and conduct after the 2020 election.
"Security concerns were escalated this weekend by the rhetoric of former President Trump at a public event in Conroe, Texas," wrote Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in a letter to the highest ranking FBI official in Atlanta.
Trump, who is at the center of at least two criminal investigations, told a rally of thousands of supporters on Saturday that "if these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had, in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere."
Willis cited that and other comments from the rally in her request to Special Agent in Charge J.C. Hacker.
"I am asking that you immediately conduct a risk assessment of the Fulton County Courthouse and Government Center, and that you provide protective resources to include intelligence and federal agents," Willis wrote.
Willis recently won approval to convene a special grand jury to aid her investigation into the former president. In her letter to Hacker, she wrote that her office is "conducting a criminal investigation of former President Donald J. Trump and his associates regarding alleged attempts to improperly influence the administration of Georgia's 2020 General Election."
Willis has said in interviews that the investigation includes a January 2, 2021, phone call in which Trump told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, "I just want to find 11,780 votes." Trump lost the state to President Biden by that margin, and the outcome was affirmed by several recounts.
The district attorney wrote that the grand jury will convene on May 2, adding that her office "will not be influenced or intimidated by anyone as this investigation moves forward."
A spokesperson for Trump did not reply to a request for comment. The FBI confirmed that it received the letter but declined to comment further.
At the rally in Texas on Saturday, Trump also said he would consider pardoning defendants charged in connection with the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, in which throngs of his supporters stormed the building, assaulting police and others.
In another part of his speech cited by Willis, Trump called the prosecutors investigating him — in Manhattan for fraud and in Fulton County for election interference — "vicious, horrible people."
"They're racist and they're very sick. They're mentally sick," Trump said. "They're going after me without any protection of my rights by the Supreme Court or most other courts. In reality they're not after me, they're after you and | just happen to be the person that's in the way."
The Manhattan investigation was the subject of a landmark Supreme Court decision in July 2020 that affirmed that even sitting presidents can be subject to state criminal subpoenas. Prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office obtained Trump's tax records in February 2021.
Melissa Quinn contributed to this report.