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      ‘I will never be detained’: Trump defiant in first speech since federal indictment

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      Donald Trump delivered his first public address following the announcement of his federal indictment this week in Columbus, Georgia, on Saturday.The former president took the stage at the state Republican convention in Georgia in the afternoon where he lashed out against the Department of Justice, the FBI and the Biden administration, called his recent indictment “a travesty of justice” and repeated unsupported conspiratorial claims that Joe Biden had stashed secret documents in the Chinatown neighborhood of Washington DC.“We got to stand up to the … radical left Democrats, their lawless partisan prosecutors … Every time I fly over a blue state, I get a subpoena,” said Trump at the onset of the meandering speech that attempted to bridge his legal troubles with campaign promises.“I’ve put everything on the line and I will never yield. I will never be detained. I will never stop fighting for you,” he added.He went on to launch a tirade against federal officials, saying, “Now the Marxist left is once again using the same corrupt DoJ [justice department] and the same corrupt FBI, and the attorney general and the local district attorneys to interfere … They’re cheating. They’re crooked. They’re corrupt. These criminals cannot be rewarded. They must be defeated. You have to defeat them.“Because in the end, they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you and I’m just standing in their way,” he said.Trump accused the Biden administration of weaponizing the justice department, calling the recent indictment “ridiculous and baseless” and “among the most horrific abuses of power in the history of our country”.He went on to add that “the only good thing about [the indictment] is it’s driven my poll numbers way up”.Trump repeated his baseless attacks against his former opponent Hillary Clinton, whom the state department investigated for several years over her use of private email before it found “no persuasive evidence of … deliberate mishandling of classified documents”.He also lashed out at Joe Biden over the classified documents from his time as vice-president and senator which were found in his office in Washington and his Delaware home.“Nothing happened to Crooked Joe with all that … He has so many classified documents … This is a sick nest of people that needs to be cleaned out immediately,” said Trump as the crowd cheered fervently.Trump also brought up his former vice-president and now presidential opponent Mike Pence, who also had marked documents discovered in his Indiana home.“They looked at Mike Pence. He had classified documents, no problem,” said Trump.While Biden and Pence turned over the marked documents as soon as they were discovered and allowed their lawyers to look through their properties, Trump has been accused of deliberately concealing boxes of records from his attorney, the FBI and the grand jury, according to the latest indictment.Trump’s two speeches had been planned before the justice department indicted him on Thursday evening with 37 criminal charges regarding his alleged illegal retention of classified government documents after leaving office in 2021.The sweeping indictment which was unsealed on Friday accuses Trump of mishandling classified documents as well as obstructing justice, making him the first US president to be federally indicted.According to the indictment, Trump stored classified documents in “a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room” at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.It also added that Trump directed Walt Nauta, his valet and aide, to move boxes of records to “conceal them from Trump’s attorney, the FBI, and the grand jury”. Nauta also faces a count of conspiracy to obstruct justice, said the indictment.The documents that Trump allegedly possessed “included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack, and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack,” said the indictment.Thursday’s indictment comes just two months after a Manhattan grand jury indicted Trump for his alleged role in a hush-money payment scandal involving the adult film star Stormy Daniels.Trump, who has repeatedly maintained his innocence, lashed out against the latest indictment on Thursday night. In a video released on his social media platform Truth Social, the GOP’s most popular presidential candidate said, “It is election interference at the highest level … I’m an innocent man, I’m an innocent person … we’ll fight this out.”He then turned to his supporters for money, writing in an email on Friday morning, “Please make a contribution to peacefully DEFEND our movement from the never-ending witch hunts – and together, even during these darkest of times, we will prove that our movement is truly UNBREAKABLE.”Trump is expected to appear in a federal court in Miami on Tuesday and may face prison if convicted. More

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      Trump to Speak at Georgia and North Carolina Republican Conventions

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      Donald J. Trump will speak on Saturday at the state G.O.P. conventions in Georgia and North Carolina, as his federal indictment dominates the political landscape.In his first two campaign stops since facing federal charges, Donald J. Trump on Saturday will begin publicly prosecuting the case against the prosecutors prosecuting him.Mr. Trump’s two speeches at the Georgia and North Carolina state G.O.P. conventions were planned before he was indicted on Thursday. The appearances on Saturday afternoon and evening will allow the former president to rally support before throngs of activists and elected officials as the most popular Republican in the country and the front-runner for the 2024 presidential nomination.Mr. Trump’s indictment, the details of which were unsealed on Friday by the Justice Department, has dominated the political landscape, forcing many of his rivals into the sometimes uncomfortable position of defending the politician they are trailing in the polls. In the unsealed indictment, federal prosecutors revealed for the first time how Mr. Trump had remained in possession of some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets, showing them off to visitors.“This indictment will be another political Rorschach test in that what you see depends on where you stand,” said David Urban, a former top adviser to Mr. Trump in his 2016 campaign.The papers Mr. Trump kept included plans for retaliating to a foreign attack and details of American nuclear programs, according to the indictment. One image displayed boxes stacked next to a toilet in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom.“Secret,” he bragged in a taped conversation, according to the indictment. “This is secret information. Look, look at this.”Several people close to Mr. Trump and his team privately acknowledged the facts in the case were damaging. But they were uncertain it would have any more impact on Republican voters than a number of other scandals that did little to change public opinion.Mr. Trump’s team is preparing to march forward, claiming he is being victimized.The former president, who was already said to be angry on Thursday night in the first hour after the indictment, was enraged when the charges were unsealed and shared with him on Friday, according to a person who spoke with him. He returned from the golf course in time to watch Jack Smith, the special counsel bringing the charges, speak on television, the person said. The indictment was filled with information from people who work with him, and Mr. Trump had already been skeptical of some aides who might have revealed certain details to the special counsel, the person said. He was especially focused on a photo of documents spilled out over the storage room floor at Mar-a-Lago, according to another person who spoke with him.Kari Lake, the failed Arizona candidate for governor who headlined a Georgia Republican Party dinner on Friday, said that no one in the G.O.P. base trusts the charges.“We see it’s just a bunch of bogus lies,” said Ms. Lake, who clings to the falsehood that her own election was stolen in 2022, in addition to Mr. Trump’s in 2020. “He’s the front-runner and they have to constantly throw things in front of his path to stop him.”Ms. Lake said Republican mistrust of the nation’s institutions runs deep. “We’ve learned that the F.B.I. is corrupt, the C.D.C., the F.D.A., the C.I.A.,” she said. “We’ve just learned a lot over the past few years.”Mr. Trump has attacked Mr. Smith, the special counsel, as “deranged, a “psycho” and a “lunatic.”Even more aggressive Trump pushback is expected in Georgia and North Carolina. The Trump team is hoping for live television coverage, which has been a rarity in his 2024 run, and sees the two appearances as a valuable opportunity for free coverage.While many leading Republicans snapped in line behind Mr. Trump the moment he revealed that he was being indicted on Thursday, party strategists have concerns about how the charges will shape any potential general election matchup with President Biden. The last two midterm elections and Mr. Trump’s own 2020 loss show that his combative approach to politics — and the accumulation of allegations against him, including his indictment in April by a Manhattan grand jury — has turned off independent and swing voters.Michael Caputo, a former senior Trump adviser who is now an executive at Americano Media, a new conservative Hispanic media outlet, said the charges “virtually assure” that Mr. Trump will win the Republican nomination in 2024.But they could have the opposite effect in a general election contest with Mr. Biden, he said, even as he dismissed the charges as part of a Democratic conspiracy.“It will be the new ‘Russia collusion hoax,’” Mr. Caputo said, using a phrase that Republicans have used in deriding the investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign conspired with Russian officials and whether he obstructed justice. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not. It’s to have him under investigation.”In Bedminster, N.J., Mr. Trump reacted to his indictment with a sense of angry defiance, according to two people who interacted with him. He still made time for the golf outing on Friday, joined by a Republican member of Congress from Miami, where he is slated to appear in court on Tuesday. Cable coverage included helicopter shots of Mr. Trump making his way down the fairway.“It’s not really a different day for President Trump,” one of Mr. Trump’s attorneys, Alina Habba, said on Fox News in the hours after his indictment. “This is something he’s gone through before.”Maggie Haberman More

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      Atlanta approves funding to build ‘Cop City’ despite fierce opposition

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      The Atlanta city council early on Tuesday approved funding for the construction of a proposed police and firefighter training center, rejecting the pleas of hundreds of activists who spoke for hours in fierce opposition to the project they decry as “Cop City”.Some Cop City opponents have faced unprecedented arrests during which police have accused them under a state domestic terrorism statute, prompting a legal challenge which argues that the protesters are being unduly targeted over their constitutionally protected free speech.Tuesday’s 11-4 vote just after 5am is a significant victory for Atlanta’s mayor, Andre Dickens, who has made the $90m project a large part of his first term in office, despite significant pushback to the effort. The city council also passed a resolution requesting two seats on the governing board of a foundation dedicated to raising funds for Atlanta police.The decentralized “Stop Cop City” movement has galvanized protesters from across the country, especially in the wake of the January fatal police shooting of Manuel Paez Terán, a 26-year-old environmental activist known as “Tortuguita” who had been camping in the woods near the site of the proposed project in DeKalb county.For about 14 hours, residents again and again took to the podium to denounce the project, saying it would be a gross misuse of public funds to build the huge facility in a large urban forest in a poor, majority-Black area.“We’re here pleading our case to a government that has been unresponsive, if not hostile, to an unprecedented movement in our city council’s history,” said Matthew Johnson, the executive director of Beloved Community Ministries, a local social justice non-profit. “We’re here to stop environmental racism and the militarization of the police … We need to go back to meeting the basic needs rather than using police as the sole solution to all of our social problems.”The training center was approved by the city council in September 2021 but required an additional vote for more funding. City officials say the new 85-acre (34-hectare) campus would replace inadequate training facilities and would help address difficulties in hiring and retaining police officers that worsened after nationwide protests against police brutality and racial injustice three years ago.But opponents, who have been joined by activists from around the country, say they fear it will lead to greater militarization of the police and that its construction will exacerbate environmental damage. Protesters had been camping at the site since at least last year, and police said they had caused damage and attacked law enforcement officers and others.The highly scrutinized vote on Tuesday also comes in the wake of the arrests last week of three organizers who lead the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which has provided bail money and helped find attorneys for arrested protesters.Prosecutors have accused the three activists of money laundering and charity fraud, saying they used some of the money to fund violent acts of “forest defenders”. Warrants cite reimbursements for expenses including “gasoline, forest clean-up, totes, (Covid-19) rapid tests, media, yard signs”. But the charges have alarmed human rights groups and prompted both of Georgia’s Democratic senators to issue statements over the weekend expressing their concerns.The Democratic US senator Raphael Warnock tweeted that bail funds held important roles during the civil rights movement and said that the images of the heavily armed police officers raiding the home where the activists lived “reinforce the very suspicions that help to animate the current conflict – namely, concerns Georgians have about over-policing, the quelling of dissent in a democracy, and the militarization of our police”. More

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      Atlanta Prosecutors Contact Firms That Consulted With Trump Campaign

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      The two companies were hired in 2020 to investigate voter fraud, but reported that they found no proof that significant fraud had occurred.Prosecutors in Atlanta investigating election interference by Donald J. Trump and his allies recently contacted two consulting companies that were hired by the Trump campaign in 2020 to research myriad claims of vote fraud but ended up finding no proof that significant fraud had occurred, according to people with knowledge of the investigation.Despite the findings of the two companies, Simpatico Software Systems and Berkeley Research Group, Mr. Trump continues to this day to make false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, even though no credible evidence has emerged to support that and many of his election conspiracy theories have been debunked.The interest in the companies and their work in Georgia and several other battleground states could be used by prosecutors to undercut claims by Mr. Trump and his allies that they had legitimate grievances about the election. The firms had previously been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors. The latest development regarding prosecutors in Atlanta was reported earlier by The Washington Post.Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., is weighing an array of potential charges against Mr. Trump, including whether he violated state laws with his post-election phone calls to state officials, including a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in which Mr. Trump said he needed to “find” 11,780 votes, or one more than his margin of defeat in the state. Ms. Willis is looking into a number of other post-election moves by the Trump team, including a plan to create a slate of fake electors pledged to Mr. Trump despite President Biden’s victory in Georgia. More than half of the electors have taken immunity deals.A special grand jury that heard evidence in the case for roughly seven months recommended more than a dozen people for indictments, and its forewoman strongly hinted in an interview with The New York Times in February that Mr. Trump was among them. Ms. Willis will need to seek any indictments from a regular grand jury, and has indicated that she will do so in the first half of August.Joyce Vance, a former federal prosecutor and law professor at the University of Alabama, said that Ms. Willis is probably interested in the companies’ failure to find significant fraud because it could help establish that Mr. Trump acted with criminal intent.If Ms. Willis does bring charges, Ms. Vance said, she will have to prove “that Trump knew that he lost the election and was in essence not asking them to find legitimate votes, but asking them to steal votes for him.”Both Ms. Willis’s office and the two companies declined to comment.During the House Jan. 6 committee’s proceedings last year, several Trump aides and allies testified that it was clear that there had been no fraud sufficient to change the outcome of the voting.One of the campaign’s lawyers, Alex Cannon, who was a contact point for Simpatico, told Mr. Trump’s son Eric around Thanksgiving 2020 that fraud claims coming in were largely unreliable, according to testimony Mr. Cannon gave to House investigators in their inquiry into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.Asked whether Eric Trump “expressed any dismay or concern about the conclusion that you were sharing with him,” Mr. Cannon said, “I think he was dismayed. I think that’s a fair characterization.” Mr. Cannon added that more senior campaign lawyers were “not surprised” that the vast majority of claims were unfounded.By the time the slate of fake electors convened in Atlanta on Dec. 14, 2020, Mr. Trump had already lost three different counts of the vote and the state’s Republican leadership had certified the outcome.Federal prosecutors, who are conducting criminal investigations of Mr. Trump independent of the Georgia inquiry, have also been focusing on whether Mr. Trump and his aides knew that he had lost the race but continued to use bogus claims of election fraud to raise money from Trump supporters, in potential violation of federal wire fraud statutes.Ken Block, the owner of the Rhode Island-based Simpatico Software, has previously said that he received a subpoena for documents from federal prosecutors. Immediately after the election, he said, a Trump campaign adviser asked him to evaluate specific allegations of election fraud in six states — Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin. Mr. Block said that his company disproved all of the allegations “and found no substantive fraud sufficient to overturn an election result.” His company was paid $735,000 for the work.Soon after hiring Simpatico, the Trump campaign hired Berkeley Research Group, a California-based consulting firm that focuses on corporate finance and investigations. A federal grand jury has received evidence that Berkeley was hired at the suggestion of Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, who was overseeing the political operation.In late April, The New York Times reported that the federal grand jury had been asking questions about whether Mr. Trump was briefed on the results of the Berkeley Research investigation, which also found no evidence of widespread fraud. The company was paid about $600,000 for its work, records show. More

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      Georgia prosecutor signals charges in 2020 election inquiry may come end of July

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      The Fulton county district attorney investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state of Georgia signalled Thursday that charging decisions in the case may come starting the final week of July, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.The indication from the prosecutor, Fani Willis, first came during a meeting with her full team where she told them to make preparations to work remotely during the final week of July and through the first weeks of August, the people said.Willis made no explicit mention of Trump during the meeting, but the specific timing is understood to reflect the expected window for indictments after previous indications suggested charging decisions would come during the court term that runs July to September.The district attorney’s office hours later told the county superior court chief judge Ural Glanville asking judges not to schedule trials and in-person hearings from 31 July to 18 August because most of her staff would be remote in a letter seen by the Guardian and first reported by the New York Times.A spokesperson for Willis did not respond to a request for comment.The district attorney’s office has spent more than two years investigating whether Trump and his allies interfered in the 2020 election in Georgia, while prosecutors at the federal level are scrutinizing Trump’s efforts to reverse his defeat that culminated in the January 6 Capitol attack.A special grand jury in Atlanta that heard evidence for roughly seven months recommended charges for more than a dozen people including the former president himself, its forewoman strongly suggested in interviews, though Willis will have to seek indictments from a regular grand jury.Willis originally suggested charging decisions were “imminent” in January, but the timetable has been repeatedly delayed after a number of Republicans who sought to help Trump stay in power as so-called fake electors accepted immunity deals as the investigation neared its end.Prosecutors then also spent several weeks on a potential conflict issue resulting from the fact that not all of the fake electors defended by lawyer Kimberly Debrow were offered immunity deals. The dispute resolved itself last week after the fake elector without a deal found a new lawyer.The meeting on Thursday afternoon appears to have been convened in part to give staff a more specific window for when indictments could arrive after Willis outlined her prosecutorial intentions in the case in a letter to the Fulton county sheriff Patrick Labat last month.“In the near future, I will announce charging decisions,” Willis wrote in the letter. “I am providing this letter to bring to your attention the need for heightened security and preparedness in coming months due to this pending announcement.”Trump is understood to have two main areas of legal jeopardy in Georgia: the calls he made to officials like the secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in an effort to reverse his election defeat in the weeks after the 2020 election, as well as his role in assembling the fake electors.But at the heart of the investigation are the steps that Trump and his campaign aides took – knowing it was probably illegal – in assembling 16 pro-Trump electors to surreptitiously gain entry to the Georgia state capitol and submit unauthorized electoral college votes for Trump to Congress. More

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      Fani Willis Signals August Timetable for Charges in Georgia Trump Inquiry

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      The Fulton County district attorney said most of her staff would work remotely at times, and asked judges not to schedule trials, in the first half of August.The Georgia prosecutor leading an investigation into former President Donald J. Trump and his allies has taken the unusual step of announcing remote work days for most of her staff during the first three weeks of August, asking judges in a downtown Atlanta courthouse not to schedule trials for part of that time as she prepares to bring charges in the inquiry.The moves suggest that Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, is expecting a grand jury to unseal indictments during that time period. Ms. Willis outlined the remote work plan and made the request to judges in a letter sent on Thursday to 21 Fulton County officials, including the chief county judge, Ural Glanville, and the sheriff, Pat Labat.“Thank you for your consideration and assistance in keeping the Fulton County Judicial Complex safe during this time,” wrote Ms. Willis, who has already asked the F.B.I. to help with security in and around the courthouse.Ms. Willis had said in a previous letter that any charges related to the Trump investigation would come in the grand jury term that runs from July 11 to Sept. 1. Her letter on Thursday appears to offer more specificity on timing.Her timetable, however, has already been pushed back as she has sought to hammer out cooperation deals with some potential defendants.Mr. Trump’s legal team is trying to scuttle the case with a motion, filed in March, seeking to quash much of the collected evidence and throw Ms. Willis off the case before any charges are filed.Ms. Willis’s office has spent more than two years investigating whether the former president and his allies illegally meddled in the 2020 election in Georgia, which Mr. Trump narrowly lost to President Biden. A special grand jury that heard evidence in the case for roughly seven months recommended more than a dozen people for indictments, and its forewoman strongly hinted in an interview with The New York Times in February that Mr. Trump was among them.Ms. Willis must now seek approval from a regular grand jury for any charges she plans to bring.With security concerns about the looming indictments in such a high-profile investigation weighing on county officials, Ms. Willis said that she would reduce staffing in her office by about 70 percent and rely on remote work on days when grand juries were in session from July 31 to Aug. 18.She said that there would be exceptions to the remote work plan, including “my leadership team” and “all armed investigators.”Ms. Willis noted in the letter that most judges would be attending a judicial conference during the week of July 31. She added: “I respectfully request that judges not schedule trials and in-person hearings during the weeks beginning Monday, Aug. 7 and Monday, Aug. 14.”Last year, Ms. Willis wrote to the Atlanta field office of the F.B.I., asking for a risk assessment of the county courthouse in downtown Atlanta and for the agency to “provide protective resources to include intelligence and federal agents.”She noted in the letter last year that Mr. Trump had called the prosecutors investigating him “vicious, horrible people” during a Texas rally in January 2022 and called for protests in cities where he was being investigated. His recent criminal indictment in New York City, on charges related to hush money payments made to a porn star, took place largely without incident. Armed pro-Trump protesters appeared around the Georgia State Capitol a number of times in the weeks after the 2020 election, as Mr. Trump and his allies made false accusations of electoral fraud. On at least one occasion, armed counterprotesters were also in the streets.Ms. Willis, who has had some staff members outfitted with bulletproof vests, is clearly concerned about the potential for unrest after any indictments in the Trump inquiry. In a letter sent to the local sheriff last month, she wrote of “the need for heightened security and preparedness in coming months due to this pending announcement.” More

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      Half of Trump’s ‘fake electors’ accept immunity in Georgia investigation

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      Half of the 16 so-called fake electors in Georgia who sought to falsely declare Donald Trump the winner of the 2020 election have accepted immunity deals in the local criminal investigation into the matter, their lawyer said in a court filing on Friday.The immunity deals to the eight came in April, according to the filing, after the Fulton county district attorney’s office called their lawyer and said prosecutors were willing to make the arrangement – about four months after the lawyer asked about the prospect of such deals.With half of the fake electors now apparently immune from prosecution, the scope of a potential conspiracy indictment ensnaring Trump and the electors – identified as targets in the case – may have narrowed, not least because the immunity deals did not compel any incriminating information in return.The filing also raised new questions about how prosecutors might handle the fake electors more broadly, after the lawyer for the eight, Kimberley Debrow, effectively accused the district attorney’s office of misrepresenting key facts in an earlier motion seeking to have her disqualified.The latest twist in the Georgia election criminal investigation comes as the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, is expected to ask a grand jury starting in mid-July to return charges against Trump and dozens of people involved in efforts to reverse his defeat in the state of Georgia.Last month, the district attorney’s office sought to disqualify Debrow from the case entirely, citing her clients’ testimony that they were not told of immunity offers, and citing a conflict of interest after some of her clients implicated another one of her clients in a separate crime.In the 68-page brief filed on Friday, Debrow vehemently disputed the claims, saying that transcripts and recordings of interviews – submitted to the court for a confidential review – showed that none of her clients told prosecutors that immunity offers were not brought to them in 2022.The filing also revealed that although eight fake electors received immunity deals, two of the fake electors – whose identities were not disclosed and were until recently her clients – had not. One of them is understood to be Cathy Latham, a local Republican party leader.A spokesperson for the district attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Debrow claimed in the filing that the transcripts of interviews with her clients showed one of the prosecutors, Nathan Wade, sought to intentionally confuse them by suggesting they were offered immunity last year, though no actual offers had been made before April 2023.In one instance, Debrow claimed, the prosecutor threatened to “tear up” the immunity deal that was already in force and binding if Debrow did not stop clarifying that the discussions about immunity prior to April were only potential offers.“Here’s the deal. Here’s the deal. Either [Elector E] is going to get this immunity, and he’s going to answer the questions – and wants to talk – or we’re going to leave. And if we leave, we’re ripping up his immunity agreement,” Wade is said to have told Debrow and her client.Debrow also claimed she could find no testimony in her clients’ interview transcripts showing them implicating another fake electors in a further crime, noting that the district attorney’s office had refused to say what the alleged crime was, or who had made the allegations.“All of the electors remain united in their collective innocence and defenses, and none testified or believe that they or any other elector committed any wrongdoing, much less ‘criminal acts’,” the filing said.Debrow added that even if it were true that some of clients incriminated another of her clients, it would not matter since they could not be prosecuted as a result of the immunity deals. More

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      Georgia governor signs bill that allows removal of district attorneys

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      Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, signed a bill on Friday that makes it possible to oust elected district attorneys from office if they are believed to not be adequately enforcing the law. It’s a move that is seen a thinly veiled power grab to push out Democratic prosecutors, include some who said they would not prosecute abortion-related crimes.The new law sets up a statewide Prosecuting Attorneys Statewide Qualifications Commission with the power to investigate complaints against district attorneys and remove them if they have sufficient cause. The law outlines a series of offenses for which a prosecutor can be removed, including “willful and persistent failure” to carry out their duties and categorically refusing to prosecute crimes they are required by law to pursue.“I am not gonna stand idly by as rogue or incompetent prosecutors refuse to uphold the law,” Kemp said at an event before he signed the bill on Friday in Savannah. “Today we are sending a message that we will not forfeit public safety for prosecutors who let criminals off the hook.”The measure comes as Fani Willis, a Democrat serving as the Fulton county district attorney, investigates Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. A special purpose grand jury has already recommended indictments in the matter and Willis has said if there are charges, they would be announced this summer.Willis has criticized the measure as “racist”, noting earlier this year that Republicans were pushing the measure after the number of minority district attorneys increased from five to 14 in 2020. ““I’m tired and I’m just going to call it how I see it,” she said. “I, quite frankly, think the legislation is racist. I don’t know what other thing to call it,” she told a senate panel earlier this year, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.The eight-person commission will consist of a five-member committee that can investigate district attorneys and a three-member hearing panel. The commissioners’ terms will formally begin in July 2024, the same month complaints can start to be filed. The commission’s members would be appointed by the governor, lieutenant governor and legislature in Georgia, which are all Republican-led.The new law is widely believed to target Deborah Gonzalez, a Democrat who was elected the prosecutor in Athens-Clarke and Oconee counties in 2020. Gonzalez has adopted a number of criminal justice reforms, including not charging for simple possession of marijuana. She was also one of several district attorneys in Georgia who announced last year that she would not prosecute abortion-related crimes.“This is not an oversight bill. It’s an overstep on the part of the legislature to undermine the voice and vote of the people who elected us as DAs based on our approach and what they felt they wanted, in terms of the way that justice should be done in their community. This just takes all of that away,” Gonzalez told Bolts, an online newsmagazine.Houston Gaines, a state lawmaker from Athens who supports the bill, said the point of it “is to restore public safety in places where you have rogue district attorneys who simply are not doing their job”, according to the Associated Press.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe bill comes as Republicans elsewhere have moved to remove elected progressive prosecutors from office. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis suspended Andrew Warren, a Democrat, after Warren said he would not enforce crimes around abortion and gender therapy. In St. Louis, Republicans were moving to oust Kim Gardner, the circuit attorney for St Louis county, before she announced she was resigning on Thursday.Georgia lawmakers also previously passed a measure that allowed for a takeover of local election boards for poor performance. A panel reviewing the elections operations in Fulton county, the most populous in the state, recommended not taking over the board earlier this year. More