CNN legal analyst Elie Honig caught himself on Thursday after he said that the Georgia prosecutor targeting former President Donald Trump’s circle is “really alarming.”
Fulton County District Attorney Dani Willis is expected to issue more than a dozen indictments in Georgia before a grand jury regarding Trump’s alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Willis is seeking conspiracy and racketeering charges, according to CNN. Willis reportedly is focusing on alleged pressure on election officials, the attempt to put forward alternate electors to vote for Trump and a voting system breach in Coffee County.
“Now we’re also learning that Trump and some of his allies could soon face charges in Georgia over the alleged effort to overturn the 2020 election results there. Sources tell CNN that Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis is expected to seek charges against more than a dozen people,” host Victor Blackwell said, introducing his guests, Reuters White House correspondent Jeff Mason and CNN senior legal analyst and former assistant U.S. attorney Elie Honig.
“Elie, let me start with you. 12 people in Georgia. Racketeering?” he asked.
“It’s got to be. I mean, all the reporting is that Fani Willis, the D.A., is looking at charging racketeering here, and that tells me she is taking a very broad view of this case. 12 people, by the way, is really alarming — not alarming, but it is a big number for a case like this,” Honig said.” But that’s what the special grand jury foreman told us a couple months ago, is that there were going to be a large number of people —” Blackwell said before Honig jumped in.
“No, that’s true. The grand jury, the special grand jury foreperson did say. I mean, what this tells me is, think about, just for perspective, Jack Smith has thus far charged one person, named six co-conspirators. That is for the nationwide scheme. Fani Willis is now going to indict over a dozen people for Georgia alone. Now, that could be because she is focused on some of the more local officials who wouldn’t necessarily be on Jack Smith’s radar, but it is clear to me, every piece of signaling that we’ve seen publicly has indicated that she is going to approach this very broadly, very aggressively.”
“But one thing I just want to flag for everyone, the indictment is the easy part. When you are a prosecutor, it’s not hard to get an indictment of essentially whoever you want, as long as you have some basis of proof. She’s writing a big check, we’ll see if she can cash it.”
The Washington Post reported in 2021 that Trump told chief investigator of the Georgia secretary of state’s office Frances Watson to “find the fraud” and lauding her as a “national hero” if she was able to find any votes. The original quotes published later turned out to be fake news with The Post issues a correction two months later. (RELATED: CLAYTON FULLER: Bragg And Willis Have Nothing On Trump – And They Know It)
“Correction: Two months after publication of this story, the Georgia secretary of state released an audio recording of President Donald Trump’s December phone call with the state’s top elections investigator,” The Post’s article now reads. “The recording revealed The Post misquoted Trump’s comments on the call, based on information provided by a source. Trump did not tell the investigator to ‘find the fraud’ or say she would be ‘a national hero’ if she did so.”
“Instead, Trump urged the investigator to scrutinize ballots in Fulton County, Ga., asserting she would find ‘dishonesty’ there,” the correction continued. “He also told her that she had ‘the most important job in the country right now.'”
In a separate call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Trump said he just wanted “to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”
