According to the Atlanta prosecutor~, any grand jury indictments in the case, looking into whether former President Donald Trump and others broke the law while attempting to avenge their Georgia 2020 election loss, are probably going to happen in August. Fani Willis, the district attorney for Fulton County, wrote to county Superior Court Chief Judge Ural Glanville on Thursday to let him know that she intends to have the majority of her staff work remotely for most of the first three weeks of August and to request that judges avoid scheduling trials and in-person hearings for a portion of that time. Twenty additional county officials, including the sheriff, the court clerk, and top executives, are copied on the letter.
Willis stated in the letter, which was first reported by The New York Times, “Thank you for your thoughtfulness and cooperation in keeping the Fulton County Judicial Complex secure during this time. Willis informed local law enforcement officials in a letter last month that she planned to reveal her decision on whether to press charges between July 11 and September 1. The letter from Thursday appears to shorten that window. She warned law enforcement in the earlier letters to be ready for “heightened security,” stressing that the introduction of the charges “may provoke a significant public reaction.”
Willis and her team have been closely examining the moves Trump and others took as they attempted to reverse his narrow loss to Democrat Joe Biden in Georgia for more than two years. In the letter to Glanville, she stated her intention to reduce staffing in her office by roughly 70% on the majority of Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays (the days Fulton County grand juries convene) between July 31 and August 18. But she added that some of the other staff members and her “leadership team, all armed investigators” would stay on the scene throughout the remote work days.
Willis requested that trials and in-person hearings be postponed between the weeks of August 7 and August 14 because the majority of judges will be attending a state judicial conference from July 31 to August 4. However, she affirmed that her office would be accessible and prepared for any in-person procedures taking place at that time. She wrote that senior leadership would handle in-person hearings if they were scheduled during a time when the majority of her team was working from home.
The former president faces a number of threats as he runs for the presidency again in 2024, including the Georgia inquiry. He was charged with 34 counts of fabricating business records to hide payments of hush money to a porn star during the 2016 presidential race by a Manhattan grand jury in March. Federal grand juries in Washington are looking into possible classified document handling violations at Trump’s Florida home as well as efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
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