In May 2022, Willis empaneled a grand jury to investigate Trump and his allies’ efforts to interfere with Georgia’s 2020 election outcome, including the former president’s so-called “perfect” call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, during which he pressured him to “find” the votes necessary for him to win the election.
Trump has repeatedly attempted to discredit prosecutors investigating him, and while it’s unclear what Trump was talking about when he accused Willis of having an affair with “gang member,”, recent social media posts indicate that he is wildly misrepresenting a case she handled in 2019.
In January, Rolling Stone spoke to rapper YSL Mondo, who co-founded the Young Stoner Life (YSL) music label with Young Thug. Willis represented Mondo during a 2019 aggravated assault case, and would later go on to prosecute YSL’s Young Thug and 13 other defendants in a RICO case alleging that the music group had affiliations with gang violence in the Atlanta area.
According to Mondo, Willis’ prosecution of Young Thug ran contrary to the impression he’d developed of the prosecutor when she represented him. “This is not her character, this is not who she is,” he told Rolling Stone. “I done had auntie-to-nephew, mother-to-son type of talks with her. I know this not her character. This is what made me start looking at [the YSL case] like I know it’s bigger than just her. It’s politics behind this shit. It’s other people that’s behind her pulling strings.”
Mondo did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment from Rolling Stone. Willis also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Friday, Trump posted a video on Truth Social painting Willis as a member of a “fraud squad” of prosecutors unfairly targeting him under the command of President Joe Biden. The video featured the headline of Rolling Stone’s interview with Mondo, and claimed that Willis “got caught hiding a relationship with a gang member she was prosecuting.”
While there’s no indication that Willis hid her representation of Mondo — or that their relationship was romantic in nature — far-right commentator and Trump ally Laura Loomer seized on the claim in the video to suggest that Willis had a sexual affair with her client.
“Atlanta DA, Fani Willis, who is targeting Donald Trump in Georgia is a straight up THOT,” Loomer wrote along with the video in a Twitter post last week. “Turns out she failed to disclose a previous relationship she had with a gang banger she was supposed to be prosecuting. Baby girl belongs in a Trap House. Not a court house.”
In case you were wondering, “THOT” stands for “that Ho over there” — a promiscuous woman. In other words, Laura Loomer, a fringe character from Florida, and Donald Trump are calling DA Willis a whore. That’s how low they have already gone and there haven’t even been any indictments yet.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Wednesday flatly denied that she had a relationship with a former client and other rumors spread by former President Donald Trump in a new campaign ad.
In an email to her colleagues, obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Willis called the information in a television spot bankrolled by the Trump campaign “derogatory and false.” She urged her staff not to respond to any of the allegations.
“You may not comment in any way on the ad or any of the negativity that may be expressed against me, your colleagues, this office in the coming days, weeks or months,” Willis wrote in the email, sent early Wednesday. “We have no personal feelings against those we investigate or prosecute and we should not express any.”
That is how professional prosecutors have to deal with psychos like Donald Trump.
This one is going to be awful.