The No-Nonsense Georgia Prosecutor on a Collision Course With Donald Trump

ATLANTA—A Fulton County Board of Commissioners meeting in the summer of 2021 was proceeding like most mundane local government gatherings. Then Fani Willis came to the podium.

The county’s then-newly elected district attorney’s presentation was more like a closing argument of a trial than the traditional recitation of figures from a department head, as she demanded more funding for her office to handle a crime wave and case backlog.

“If there is anyone in here confused and thinks I’m in here to talk about widgets, I’m here to talk about human life,” she said.

Her office got more funding.

Willis has carved out a reputation in Georgia legal circles as a no-nonsense prosecutor and workaholic who relishes taking on complex cases. Her path to power has put her on a collision course with former President Donald Trump, whose behavior after the 2020 election is thought to be central to her investigation of alleged attempts to overturn President Biden’s narrow victory in this state.

State grand juries were being seated in Atlanta last week, setting the stage for jurors to hear evidence soon. The case could lead to criminal indictments for Trump and others who sought vigorously to negate his loss here. For about 2½ years, Willis has led an extensive probe into the matter, including questioning under oath of politicians and Trump supporters such as Rudolph Giuliani, once his lawyer, and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a political confidant.

Trump has lashed out at Willis, 51 years old, last year labeling her a “young, ambitious, Radical Left Democrat ‘Prosecutor’ from Georgia.” Trump and his supporters have repeatedly denied wrongdoing and attacked her investigation as partisan. Trump asked Georgia’s highest court on Thursday to effectively shut down the criminal investigation.

In an interview, Willis declined to discuss specifics of the case, but said she was confident that what she brings to a grand jury will stick. She defends her office as fair.

“Our office has very few cases that are no-billed,” she said, meaning a grand jury has declined to indict. She added later, “I refuse to fail.”

Willis said she is at her desk by 6:30 a.m. and stays until at least 7 p.m. She has asked staff to split shifts to keep up with her. The obsessive work ethic has hurt her family life, she said.

A longtime prosecutor, she once described herself as “one of the best murder prosecutors in this country.” Former co-workers said she is a stickler for preparation in cases and excellent in persuading juries.

“You look at her and she doesn’t come across as the ice queen,” said Clint Rucker, a criminal-defense attorney who worked closely with Willis for years in the DA’s office. “And then she opens her mouth, she roars. And it catches people off guard. I love to watch it.”

In April, Manhattan prosecutors charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records relating to hush-money payments. In June, he was indicted in federal court in Florida on 37 counts that he illegally retained and shared classified national-security documents after leaving the White House. 

Trump pleaded not guilty in both cases. Willis told The Wall Street Journal she hasn’t been focused on the cases outside her own investigation.

In Georgia, the probe by Willis’s office has focused on efforts by Trump and his supporters to reverse his loss in the state in 2020, the first for a GOP presidential candidate since 1992. Trump lost by about 12,000 votes out of about five million cast. He and his supporters repeatedly alleged the vote was fraudulent, although two statewide recounts overseen by the Republican secretary of state showed Biden won. Court challenges by Trump and others failed. 

Willis was born in 1971 near Los Angeles. Her father, John C. Floyd III, was a founder of a faction of the Black Panthers but later grew disillusioned by the movement’s infighting, according to a piece he wrote in a Black Los Angeles newspaper the same year his daughter was born.

Floyd became a criminal-defense attorney, and the family moved to Washington. Willis’s parents divorced and she stayed with her father in Washington, often sitting in a courtroom as he represented clients, many of them facing serious charges.

Willis attended Howard University and graduated from Emory University law school in 1996. She began practicing law as a plaintiffs’ attorney and working in the Atlanta city solicitor’s office.

In the WSJ interview, she said her father taught her the importance of preparing for trial, and teachers at Howard University stressed to her that being a Black woman meant she needed to work twice as hard to prove herself.

“She is diligent about preparation so that when she does speak, she does so with authority,” said Gwen Keyes Fleming, a Washington lawyer and former district attorney in neighboring DeKalb County who considers herself a mentor to Willis.

Rucker first became aware of Willis when he was a young prosecutor. He said a judge called him and said Willis was talented and should come to the DA’s office to handle more serious cases. She joined in 2001, hired by then-DA Paul Howard.

Willis quickly began specializing in serious, complex crimes and by her estimation has handled more than 100 murders. 

Her biggest case while working for Howard involved helping lead the team that won multiple convictions in a notorious cheating scandal involving Atlanta Public Schools teachers and staff. Rucker, who worked with Willis on that case, said the high-profile nature of it brought a lot of negative publicity to Willis and Rucker, who also is Black. Angry parents, local groups and even churches attacked the DA’s office for bringing cases against Black teachers and school staff.

“But she was absolutely dogged about representing those kids,” Rucker said. 

Brian Ross, a plaintiffs’ attorney who worked as a prosecutor for years in the Fulton County DA’s office, with Willis as his direct supervisor, recalled one case that was several weeks out and for which he hadn’t yet prepared much. Willis asked him to come to the grand-jury room. He thought he was walking into a one-on-one meeting. He entered to find about 20 people waiting for him in a mock-trial format. Willis asked him to deliver his opening remarks in the coming case.

“She forced me to be better,” he said. 

Willis, a divorced mother of two daughters, left the DA’s office in 2018 to go into private practice but quickly decided to run for a local judgeship. She lost that race and then decided to run against her old boss, Howard, who was embroiled in investigations into alleged misuse of funds and other issues.

Howard, who didn’t respond to requests seeking comment, had repeatedly denied wrongdoing.

Willis defeated her former boss, and she took office right as The Washington Post reported on a Jan. 2, 2021, recording of Trump calling Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, pressing him to “find” votes to overturn Trump’s loss. Willis immediately launched an investigation. The Journal later published audio of a December 2020 call of Trump urging the chief investigator of the Georgia Secretary of State’s office to look for fraud during an audit of mail-in ballots.

State judges granted Willis a special grand jury to compel potential witnesses to testify. The special grand jury lacked the authority to issue indictments, but it did issue a report, only portions of which have been made public. The report stated that some of the witnesses might have lied under oath. Willis is expected to use the report to seek criminal indictments from a traditional grand jury. 

One of Willis’s biggest challenges has been coping with a historic surge in violent crime that hit Atlanta, fueled as in other cities by Covid-19 turmoil, racial unrest and a resurgence of drug-gang wars. Her office has brought charges against alleged gang members and she has held news conferences announcing arrests. Violent crime has dropped during her tenure. 

Willis at times opted to bring sweeping racketeering charges that unnecessarily complicate matters, said Andrew Fleischman, an Atlanta defense lawyer. “I believe that in a city that has pretty active crimes and lots of backlogs, you could simply not indict cases in super-complicated ways,” he said.

In the election probe, Willis reached immunity deals in April with at least eight Republican Party activists who were part of a group in 2020 that falsely declared Trump the winner in the state. Willis also wrote a letter to the Fulton County sheriff stating she would announce “charging decisions” in the probe between July 11 and Sept. 1.

Willis said friends often give her turtle figurines, an animal she admires.

“They are methodical,” she said. “But they get to their destination.”

Write to Cameron McWhirter at [email protected] and Jan Wolfe at [email protected]