Georgia prosecutor seeks FBI protection after Trump called for protests if those investigating him do 'anything wrong or illegal'
- A Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis sought assistance from the FBI in the wake of a Trump rally.
- Trump at the rally sought to whip up opposition to prosecutors investigating him.
A Georgia prosecutor requested security from the FBI after Donald Trump in a speech Saturday called for protests over unspecified illegal actions by officials investigating him.
Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, made the request in a letter to the FBI's field office in Atlanta after Trump appeared to hone in on her work while calling for "the biggest protests we have ever had."
Joe Henke, a reporter for the Atlanta-area news station 11Alive, posted a copy of the letter on Twitter:
Willis is leading a criminal inquiry into whether Trump acted illegally in his attempts to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, a former Republican stronghold which he narrowly lost to Joe Biden.
In the letter, Willis, who is a Democrat, wrote that her "security concerns were escalated this weekend" by Trump's rhetoric.
"I am asking that you immediately conduct a risk assessment of the Fulton County Courthouse and Government Center, and that you provide protective resources to include intelligence and federal agents," wrote Willis in the letter.
The FBI's Atlanta field office confirmed the receipt of the letter, and urged anyone with information on "potential threats" to get in touch.
The request followed remarks by Trump at his rally in Conroe, Texas, on Saturday, where he railed against the investigations being conducted by Willis and also by prosecutors in New York probing his businesses.
Trump called for "the biggest protests we have ever had" should prosecutors "do anything illegal."
"If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had ... in Washington, DC, in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere because our country and our elections are corrupt," Trump said.
Willis and the prosecutors leading Trump investigations in Manhattan and at the state level in New York are all Black. Trump gave no evidence for his claim that the prosecutors in question are racist.
County Superior Court judges last week approved Willis' request to convene a grand jury this spring — a step enabling the prosecutor to issue subpoenas and compel witnesses to provide evidence relevant to the investigation.