Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) told the audience at the Atlanta-based hip hop festival Revolt World that she and her family members have received threats due to her office’s prosecutions of former President Donald Trump and rapper Young Thug.
Willis (pictured above) attended the festival, held in Atlanta beginning on September 22. She delivered remarks about her high-profile prosecutions of Trump and Young Thug, whose real name is Jeffrey Lamar Williams. At one point, Willis told the audience that her father, daughters, and ex-husband have all received threats due to the high-profile cases, in addition to threats she personally received.
“It’s very unfair to the other people and it’s a waste of time. It’s not going to stop what I’m doing,” Willis told the audience, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She called the threats “troubling” and claimed to have “become very private” about her family.
The FBI is reportedly investigating threats made against Willis in the wake of her office’s indictment of Trump and 18 of his current or former associates. CNBC notes that Willis claimed to have “received racist threats” over the Trump charges.
Similarly, Willis’s office recently revealed that gang sympathizers threatened the life of a witness in the Young Thug case, according to WSB-TV. The revelation came after Willis’s office discovered court documents posted to social media, including part of a statement from a cooperating witness.
Speaking to the crowd at Revolt World, Willis defended her decision to use lyrics written by Young Thug as evidence against the rapper. Using song lyrics as evidence against a defendant is controversial and was banned in California after Governor Gavin Newsom (D) signed a Democratic-backed bill into law last year.
“If you commit a crime and then you brag about it in a song, it’s a confession,” said Willis, according to AJC. She added, “Because you put a beat behind it, does not make it any less than a confession and we are going to use it to convict you.”
Willis also discussed the recent $2.5 million federal grant her office received to examine more than 4,000 rape kits in its backlog. Some of those rape kits reportedly date to the 1980s.
“It’s very sad when you look at those cases,” said Willis, per AJC. She wondered, “How many crimes could have been prevented, if the first young lady’s kit was tested?”
Around the time Willis was preparing to deliver remarks to the Revolt World festival, an investigator with her office accidentally shot herself in the leg while at the Fulton County Courthouse. The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office later confirmed the wounds were not critical, and the investigator was conscious and alert after the accidental discharge.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Georgia Star News and a reporter for the Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Fani Willis” by Fani Willis.
