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Trump campaign runs ad attacking Georgia DA who’s expected to indict him

Fulton County DA Fani Willis has been investigating former president’s alleged attempts to overturn loss to Joe Biden in state

Graeme Massie
Los Angeles
Wednesday 09 August 2023 23:22 BST
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Trump claims Georgia DA had an affair with a gang member

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Donald Trump is running a campaign advert attacking a Georgia district attorney just days before she is expected to become the latest prosecutor to indict him.

The commercial, which is airing in Atlanta and other cities, takes shots at Fulton County DA Fani Willis who has been investigating the former president’s alleged attempts to overturn Joe Biden’s win in the state in 2020.

Ms Willis is believed to be ready to present charges in her investigation to an Atlanta grand jury next week, while Mr Trump’s one-minute advert will run in the city from Wednesday to Sunday, according to the advertising tracking firm AdImpact.

A campaign aide told NBC News that it will also air in New York, Washington DC and nationally.

It was initially released on Sunday and accuses Ms Willis of wrongdoing, as well as mentioning special counsel Jack Smith and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg by name.

Ms Willis has been investigating Mr Trump’s alleged election interference, which includes 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.

Ms Willis has also investigated a scheme to put in place an alternate slate of presidential electors.

It comes just a day after Mr Trump shockingly attacked Ms Willis’s sex life and baselessly claimed that she had an “affair” with a gang leader.

“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.

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.

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