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“I have 182 open, unindicted homicides involving 222 defendants,” she said. “I have a sex crime unit that is backed up. But I am very capable of identifying great people to work in this office who are dedicated to the cause of making this county safer, and I do not get to be derelict in my duty, because I have other responsibilities.”
Clark D. Cunningham, a law professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta, said it appeared that Ms. Willis might be “pulling out all the stops” for the Trump case, “because of the range of the types of crimes that are mentioned in that letter,” he said, adding, “and particularly the talk about racketeering and conspiracy.”
The pressure campaign to overturn the Georgia election results began on Nov. 13, when Mr. Graham, a Trump ally from South Carolina, made a phone call to Mr. Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state. Mr. Raffensperger, a Republican, later said that Mr. Graham had asked him if he had the authority to throw out all mail-in votes from particular counties, a suggestion the secretary of state rebuffed. (Mr. Graham disputed Mr. Raffensperger’s account.)
On Dec. 3, Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, made an appearance before a Georgia State Senate committee, saying that “there’s more than ample evidence to conclude this election was a sham,” and laid out a number of false claims. Two days later, Mr. Trump called Brian Kemp, Georgia’s Republican governor, to press him to call a special session of the legislature to overturn the election. Mr. Trump then called Georgia’s Republican attorney general, Chris Carr, and pressured him not to oppose a legal attempt to challenge the elections results in Georgia and other swing states.
Because of the flurry of Trump calls, Ms. Willis said she believes that she is the only official with jurisdiction who does not have a conflict of interest. As she wrote in her letters to other public officials, “this office is the one agency with jurisdiction that is not a witness to the conduct that is the subject of the investigation.”
Even after Mr. Raffensperger recertified the election results on Dec. 7, Mr. Trump’s efforts intensified. Three days later, Mr. Giuliani testified virtually before a state House committee, repeating false claims that poll workers at an Atlanta arena had counted improper ballots stuffed in suitcases, when they were simply using the normal storage containers. “They look like they’re passing out dope,” he said during the hearing.
Gabriel Sterling, a top aide to Mr. Raffensperger, has derided the claims as a ridiculous, “‘Oceans 11’ type scheme,” adding, “This has been thoroughly debunked.”
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