| FIND ME THE VOTES A Hard-Charging Georgia Prosecutor, a Rogue President, and the Plot To Steal an American Election Michael Isikoff & Daniel Klaidman Twelve, September 2024 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13: 978-1-5387-3999-0 | ||||
| ISBN-10: 1-5387-3999-2 | 329pp. | HC | $30.00 | |
John Clifford Floyd III was a hell-raiser in his early days. He often missed meals while growing up in South Central L.A. He lived in a house with sixteen relatives, a toilet on the back porch, and chickens in the yard. He spent a lot of time on the streets to avoid his abusive father. He had the good luck to attend Catholic schools where his potential was recognized. He went on to take part in the "Freedom Summer" civil rights movement, going to Mississippi in 1962 to register Black voters and sitting in at Memphis, Tennessee lunch counters in 1965. A week after he returned to Los Angeles, the Watts riots broke out. All this radicalized him. In 1967, he co-founded the Black Panther Political Party of Los Angeles — similar to but not aligned with the Oakland, CA Black Panthers. He also hooked up with a local firebrand named Angela Davis and lived with her for a time. Later, he put aside his weapons, became a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer, got married, and raised up two daughters. One of them turned out as ardently dedicated to the causes of criminal justice and civil rights as he is. She got herself elected as the Fulton County District Attorney, where she now leads the prosecution of a former president for fraud in the Georgia 2020 election.
There had long been a lazy assumption among many in the media and political world that Black officials like Willis would be aligned with liberal activists who were demanding new progressive policies such as putting an end to cash bail, lightening up on harsh sentences, and eliminating the death penalty. But in the great national debate about crime and punishment, Willis did not fit the mold. She was, to be sure, a daughter of the civil rights movement whose core outlook was shaped by the struggle for African American equality and voting rights. But she was also a hard-bitten ex-homicide prosecutor who was a firm believer in what the academics loftily called retributive justice—a fancy way of saying, if you do the crime, you do the time. Willis had spent much of her career sending violent criminals, many of them Black, to prison, arguing to juries about the grievous toll their actions had taken on victims and their families. Whatever ambivalence she might have expressed at times over her role prosecuting Black teachers and educators in the school cheating case, Willis was keenly attuned to the impact that murders, gangs, and violence were having on her county—and the demands among many, especially in the African American community, to do something about it. In due course, Donald Trump would accuse Willis of being a "radical" who cared not at all about putting violent criminals in jail. He couldn't have been more wrong. – Pages 41-42 |
Before she became Fulton County DA, Fani Willis had been assigned by the then-DA, Paul Howard, to prosecute the teachers and administrators involved in the cheating scandal triggered by George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind Act. The controversial trial did her no good in her campaign. But Paul Howard's history of sexual harassment, coupled with his misguided support for Rayshard Brooks, a Black gang member killed by Atlanta police, doomed his candidacy. Crime was mounting in the Peach State's capital. The Wendy's where Brooks died had been burned down, and local Blacks had occupied the site, setting up barricades on the streets and menacing passers-by. Fani Willis clobbered Howard in the August, 2020 runoff with 70% percent of the vote. She went on to prosecute two members of the Bloods gang after they shot up a family's vehicle and killed an eight-year-old girl (Brooks had also been a Blood.)
Then came 6 January 2021. As Trump's mob was massing on the Ellipse in Washington, DC, Gabriel Sterling noticed armed men in militia garb marching around the office where Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was working. At the same time, state police rushed in to tell Raffensperger that the group's leader,a notorious rabble-rouser, was heading into the building to confront him. To avoid an ugly scene, Raffensperger left the building. Interviewed by the authors, Chester P. Doles, a former Grand Dragon of the KKK, told them he would have said to Raffensperger, "You sold us out!" And soon Trump's famous phone call asking Raffensperger to "find 11,780 votes" was known throughout the country.
In the end, Trump's efforts in Georgia failed because of an iron wall forged by the state's top Republican officeholders, their deputies, and their lawyers. But there was undoubtedly some sort of cosmic justice in the fact that, in a state where for more than a century Black people had been denied the right to vote and suffered rigid Jim Crow segregation, it fell to a determined Black local DA to find accountability for what Trump had tried to do. – Pages 4-5 |
Fani Willis was known as a hard-charging and successful prosecutor who pushed her staff hard to make sure every piece of evidence in her cases was solid. She had prosecuted the dozens of Atlanta educators involved in the cheating motivated by the No Child Left Behind law in 2014. And in 2020, eight months into her stint as DA, with Atlanta filled with unrest after two white police officers killed Rayshard Brooks, Willis prosecuted two members of the Bloods gang for killing an eight year old girl, Secoriea Turner.
But prosecuting Trump and his co-conspirators was a whole new ballgame. Some thought Raffsenperger would lead the effort. He had the authority to police election misconduct. But because Trump's famous phone call had been to him, he had a conflict of interest. And because he was at his home in Fulton County when he took the call, it naturally fell to Fani Willis. It would be a challenge unlike anything she had faced before. First, it potentially had nationwide implications; who knew how far afield some of the Georgia conspirators had ranged? It certainly would bring in the national media. Finally there was the matter of intimidation, already widespread — as shown by the harassment of Ruby Freeman and her daughter.2 Fani Willis and her staff also endured threats. After announcing the indictment of Trump and his nineteen co-conspirators on 14 August 2023, she changed into casual clothes and was whisked off to a secure hotel. Meanwhile, a body double wearing a business suit like the DA had worn left the underground garage by motorcade to draw off any lurking assassins.3
The book gives a good overview of Fani Willis's life and is a fascinating account of how her prosecution of Trump is proceeding. It has notes and a good index, and also includes a cast of characters — very necessary for the wide net cast by Trump's prosecution. I give it full marks and rate it a keeper.
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.