Donald Trump has invested an enormous amount of time and energy trying to smear special counsel Jack Smith, with the former president going so far as to argue that he wants to see Smith “in jail.”
But we’re occasionally reminded that the special counsel isn’t the only prosecutor the Republican is desperate to tear down. Yesterday, for example, Trump spoke in New Hampshire — the remarks were ostensibly about veterans benefits — and turned his attention to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
Trump claims Fani Willis is racist against white people like him and spreads rumors about her sex life pic.twitter.com/DJu4XWCang
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 8, 2023
“I probably have another [indictment],” he told his audience. “They say there’s a young woman, a young racist in Atlanta. She’s a racist. And they say, I guess, they say that she was after a certain gang, and she ended up having an affair with the head of the gang, or a gang member. And this is the person that wants to indict me.”
As Trump smears go, this was among the more grotesque.
For one thing, there’s literally no evidence to suggest Willis is racist, and it’s curious how the former president only seems to apply the label to Black prosecutors who suspect him of crimes.
For another, there’s literally no evidence to suggest Willis had an affair with a gang member, and the Republican’s campaign has made no effort to substantiate the claim. But as important as these details are, and as ugly as Trump’s attempted smear was, the apparent case against him is proceeding anyway. The New York Times reported: The fourth criminal case involving Donald J. Trump is likely to come to a head next week, with the district attorney in Atlanta expected to take the findings from her election interference investigation to a grand jury. The Georgia investigation may be the most expansive legal challenge yet to the efforts that Mr. Trump and his advisers undertook to keep him in power after he lost the 2020 election.
“The work is accomplished,” Willis told local outlet 11Alive last week. “We’ve been working for two and a half years. We’re ready to go.” Trump said a lot of wildly untrue things yesterday, especially about the Georgia prosecutor, but when the former president told his audience that he’ll “probably” be indicted for election-related crimes in Fulton County, that was the one claim he made that was very easy to believe.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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