Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns (R) followed up on fellow Republicans over their demands that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis be stripped of funds after her office filed indictments against former President Donald Trump earlier this month had.
“A select few are demanding that a duly elected district attorney of this state and her office be deprived of the resources to intervene in the criminal justice system,” Burns wrote in a letter to the state’s GOP caucus On Wednesday.
“Regardless of your opinion on this case, removing this funding would also have the unintended consequence of delaying or failing to prosecute other serious crimes such as murder, rape, armed robbery, gang crime, assault, etc.,” he continued.
Burns went on to warn those concerned about “severe crime rates” in Atlanta that such a move to defund Willis would harm public safety.
“It is unfortunate that some knowingly suggest such a reckless course of action, despite the devastating effects it would have,” he wrote.
At the beginning of the letter, the Republican referred to the threat to his state from Hurricane Idalia.
“It is an unfortunate reality of contemporary politics that theatricality sometimes attracts more attention than genuine human needs, such as are occurring in southern and coastal Georgia today,” Burns wrote.
He also stated in the letter, “Targeting a particular prosecutor’s office in this way certainly demonstrates, if not violates, the idea of separation of powers.”
Burns’ comments follow a letter from Georgia State Senator Colton Moore (R) to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) in which Colton called for a special session of the Legislature to impeach Willis. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
“America is under attack. I will not sit back and watch radical left prosecutors target political opponents,” Moore wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter) earlier this month.
Moore recently warned of a possible “civil war“Unless lawmakers strip Willis of the funds, Mediaite reported.
Kemp, meanwhile, was “flashy in [his] unwillingness to further fuel criticism of Willis when he claimed that Democrats want Republicans to focus on the former president’s legal concerns rather than focus on President Joe Biden’s record, The Associated Press noted.
Trump targeted Willis and Kemp in a post on his Truth Social platform earlier this month.
“Governor Kemp of Georgia is fighting hard to remove from office the corrupt, incompetent and highly partisan Fulton County Attorney Fani Willis, who has caused a MASSIVE escalation of homicide and other violent crimes,” he wrote. “Atlanta’s crime rate is the worst in the country. She should be charged for many reasons, not just the witch hunt (I did nothing wrong!).”
Other Republicans were also critical of the prosecutor, including Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who declared, “Fani Willis should be ashamed and she will lose her job.” We’ll make sure of that.”