She was vaulted into the national spotlight after unveiling an indictment of the former president and his allies.
Former President Donald Trump was indicted for the fourth time on Monday night over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat in Georgia — and it has quickly become one of the most-watched in the slew of cases he’s currently facing. But who is the lawyer behind all of this legal drama?
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is leading the charge, and it could be the most consequential move in her career. Following her wide-ranging investigation, a grand jury charged the former president with 13 counts, including racketeering and conspiracy. And he’s got company: 18 of his allies, including White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, have also been charged over their efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 defeat in the Peach State.
“The indictment alleges that rather than abide by Georgia’s legal process for election challenges, the defendants engaged in a criminal racketeering enterprise to overturn Georgia’s presidential election result,” Willis said at a late-night news conference immediately following the news.
As we await what’s sure to be a high-stakes trial, here’s what we know about Willis and what happens next.
Who is Fani Willis?
Willis, who’s a Democrat, was first elected in 2020 as district attorney for Georgia’s Fulton County, which encompasses 15 cities, including Atlanta. Following her win, she took over the role held by her former boss, Paul Howard, becoming the first Black woman to hold the job.
She also happened to take office just days after audio leaked of Trump asking Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn his election loss in the state. Shortly after this came to light, Willis opened a two-year probe into the phone call before expanding it to examine other alleged attempts by Trump allies to interfere with the democratic process.
Those who are close to Willis say she isn’t afraid to go after anyone — even a former president — because she sees it as not only part of her job, but a responsibility of the state.
“The government has only two responsibilities if you live in a democracy,” Willis told The Washington Post in January. “The number one thing that needs to happen in a free society is that you’ve got to keep people safe. The second thing in a free country is the importance of the right to vote.”
Meanwhile, Trump asserts that Willis is a “rabid partisan,” who’s attempting to “maximally interfere” with the presidential election. Some Republicans have also jumped to the former president’s defense, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
What do we know about Fani Willis’s background, family, and husband?
Willis grew up in Washington, D.C., where she was primarily raised by her dad, John Floyd. Since he was a prominent defense lawyer, she would often accompany him to the D.C. Superior Court, and by age 8 she was already organizing his homicide case files.
So it seemed only natural that she’d follow in her father’s footsteps. After graduating from Howard University and Emory University School of Law, she became an assistant district attorney for Fulton County in 2001. Then in 2018, she opened her own law firm, where she specialized in criminal defense and family law. That same year, she also ran for a seat on the Superior Court of Fulton County, a race she lost before becoming the chief municipal judge for South Fulton, Georgia, the following year.
Willis only decided to run for Fulton County’s district attorney position in 2020 after arguing the office was “broken” under Howard, who faced allegations of financial mismanagement and sexual harassment at the time.
In light of Willis’s increased national profile, many people have been Googling to find out about her personal relationships, too. She was previously married to Fred Willis, who she met on the day she passed the bar exam, while he was working as a videographer.
“He had some really nice legs,” Willis told TIME with a smile in 2021. “It produced me two beautiful girls. So that’s what made me decide to stay in Atlanta. I graduated [Emory] in May. I was married by November.”
The couple split in 2005. “I divorced when my children were very young, four and five years old,” Willis recalled. “They had always had a mother that worked. I always had a couch in my office so that my children could come there and sleep as I prepare for trial.”
What is RICO?
To charge Trump and his allies, Willis primarily relied on a statute in Georgia known as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO. It’s based on the federal version that goes by the same name, which Congress enacted in 1970 to go after mob bosses and organized crime.
But Georgia’s version that was put on the books in 1981 is considered more controversial than the federal statute because it has a broader interpretation. Essentially, prosecutors need to show a pattern of racketeering activity, carried out by two or more people as part of some sort of enterprise, such as a gang or even a political party.
According to The Atlanta-Journal Consitution, prosecuting attorneys — as seen in Trump’s case — can also use crimes committed outside of the state to prove a wider conspiracy. For instance, Willis alleges that the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election could also be seen in other states including Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
“The indictment paints a pretty damning picture of the Trump operation, making it look very much structured, like those illegal enterprise operations,” Georgetown law professor Neal Katyal tells Katie. “But you don’t need to show that at all. To win a RICO charge, all you need to show is that there was this illegal agreement and a pattern of racketeering activity. And here, there are over 90 different acts that overt acts that are alleged in several different instances of Trump trying to steal the election.”
Still, Willis is no stranger to using RICO. In 2015, Willis led an investigation charging 11 teachers of racketeering and conspiracy for allegedly cheating or enabling cheating on students’ standardized tests. Then in 2022, rapper Young Thug, whose real name is Jeffrey Lamar Williams, was among more than a dozen people arrested for conspiring to violate the state’s racketeering law and for allegedly participating in gang activity. Both cases are still ongoing, and Willis plans to continue to prosecute them.
What’s next in Donald Trump’s case in Georgia?
RICO trials are notoriously known to be long affairs, and this is especially true in Trump’s case in Georgia, which consists of 19 defendants in total.
Nevertheless, Willis has proposed a March 4 trial date, with arraignments during the week of Sept. 5. In the meantime, those charged have until noon on Aug. 25 to surrender.
Trump is also facing three other indictments that all carry varying degrees of charges. In the Georgia case alone, Trump could face up to 20 years in prison and a fine of as much as $250,000 or three times the amount of money gained from the criminal activity.
“Each of these indictments looks incredibly compelling to me,” says Katyal. “They have enormous credibility in their witnesses, and at the end of the day, Trump will be convicted.”
