Donald Trump branded a Georgia prosecutor “a young racist” and claimed she had an “affair” with a gang leader, speaking to a rally just days before he is expected to face a criminal indictment from her office.
The three-times indicted former president took shots at Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis, who is investigating him for his conduct in the state during the 2020 presidential election.
“There’s a young racist in Atlanta ... They say she was after a certain gang and she ended up having an affair with the head of the gang or a gang member,” claimed Mr Trump during a speech in New Hampshire on Tuesday.
“This is a person who wants to indict me. She’s got a lot of problems. But she wants to indict me to try and run for some other office … Wants to indict me for a perfect phone call, this was even better than my perfect call on Ukraine.”
And he added: “I challenged the election in Georgia, which I had every right to do… and they want to indict me because I challenged the election.”
Last week Mr Trump posted a video on Truth Social featuring a Rolling Stone headline about Ms Willis defending rapper YSL Mondo in 2019, and falsely claiming that she “got caught hiding a relationship with a gang member she was prosecuting.”
There is no suggestion or evidence that Ms Willis had any romantic relationship with the rapper, who described “mother-to-son type of talks with her”, reported the magazine.
Ms Willis, who is married with two children, is expected to soon indict him for illegally trying to reverse Joe Biden’s victory in the state, which paved his way to the White House.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis— (AP)
Mr Trump’s alleged election interference included his infamous phone call to Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, in which he demanded that he “find” him the 11,780 votes he needed to beat Mr Biden.
Trump attacks Fani Willis pic.twitter.com/WDnwII5KRe
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 8, 2023
Ms Willis has also investigated a scheme to put in place an alternate slate of presidential electors.
Even if Mr Trump wins the 2024 election he cannot fire Ms Willis, unlike special counsel Jack Smith, as state crimes are not subject to presidential pardon.
Fulton County Sheriff officers block off a street in front of the Fulton County Courthouse on August 07, 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia— (Getty Images)
Mr Trump has already been indicted on federal charges that he tried to overturn the 2020 election and a separate federal case over alleged retention of government documents at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida. He has also been charged by the Manhattan DA in a hush-money case linked to the 2016 presidential election. That case relates to allegations he paid off a porn actress he had allegedly had an affair with while his wife was nursing their newborn son.
He has pleaded not guilty in all of the cases and strongly denied any wrongdoing.
Earlier this year the former president was found liable for sexually assaulting a magazine columnist, E Jean Carroll, in a New York department store in the mid-1990s.
Mr Trump has a long history of making outrageous false claims about his opponents. He called his own former secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, “dumb as a rock”, and his former defence secretary James Mattis “the world’s most overrated general”. He has recently taking to insulting fellow Republican presidential nominee – and former friend – Chris Christie over his weight.
The Washington Post calculated that during the four years of his presidency, Mr Trump made more than 30,000 false or misleading statements.
The day after his presidency ended, the paper wrote: “What is especially striking is how the tsunami of untruths kept rising the longer he served as president and became increasingly unmoored from the truth.”
