Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., went before a federal judge on Tuesday in downtown Atlanta. Not as a prosecutor, but as a victim.
In August 2023, Ms. Willis, who is leading the state election interference case against former President Donald J. Trump and 14 of his allies, was the subject of a threatening voice mail message that a white man from Huntsville, Ala., Arthur Ray Hanson II, left on a Fulton County customer service line.
Mr. Hanson used racist epithets against Ms. Willis, who is Black, issued warnings like “Watch it when you’re going to the car, OK?” and disparaged her appearance. In a separate call, Mr. Hanson also threatened the Fulton County sheriff, Patrick Labat.
Mr. Hanson, 59, pleaded guilty this summer to one charge of making interstate threats, and on Tuesday, at his sentencing hearing, Ms. Willis and Sheriff Labat, who is also Black, had their chance to speak to the judge before he made his decision.
Ms. Willis spoke of the “vile threat” that Mr. Hanson made. She spoke of the fear it stoked in her children and in her father. She spoke of the multitude of threats she has received since Mr. Trump’s indictment in August 2023, many of which included racist insults.
Noting that young men in Mr. Hanson’s family or orbit had come to support him, she said: “I hope they wholly reject the racism that he showed to myself and the sheriff.”
In the end, Judge J.P. Boulee of U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia sentenced Mr. Hanson to 21 months in a federal prison. He said that the “appalling” threats had created a real sense of fear for Sheriff Labat and Ms. Willis.
Mr. Hanson’s sentencing was destined to be a small but weighty episode in the broader story of Ms. Willis’s prosecution of Mr. Trump. The fact that a Black woman, in a Deep South city that has become one the nation’s most important centers of Black cultural life, is prosecuting a white former president for trying to overturn his 2020 election loss has not been lost on Mr. Trump, who has referred to Ms. Willis as racist.
In his message directed at the sheriff, Mr. Hanson, an insurance salesman, called the former president “my President Trump.”
Judge Boulee, in his sentencing, said that he hoped it would serve as a deterrent to others who would threaten public officials. The racism, he said, was “an attempt to make them feel low and less valued.”
Mr. Hanson and his lawyers argued that he was a good man with a drinking problem and mental health issues, and that he had been drunk when he made the threatening calls. A Black friend of Mr. Hanson’s spoke on his behalf, calling him a good man and asking the judge to consider an alternative to prison despite Mr. Hanson’s “mortifying” statements.
Mr. Hanson spoke a few minutes later. He turned to Ms. Willis and Sheriff Labat and apologized, his face red from crying. “That person on the voice mail is not me,” he said.
Ms. Willis’s case against the former president is on hold. In December, the Georgia Supreme Court will consider Mr. Trump’s appeal of a decision by a judge in a lower court that allowed Ms. Willis to stay on the case despite a romantic relationship she had with a lawyer she had chosen to help her lead the prosecution. Mr. Trump’s lawyers argue that she should be removed, saying that the relationship amounted to a conflict of interest.
A number of legal experts say that if Mr. Trump wins the presidential election, there is a good chance his Georgia case will remain on hold until he leaves office. He is charged with other serious felonies in federal court, but if he returns to the White House, he is likely to use his power over the Justice Department to make them go away.
In brief comments to reporters after the hearing, Ms. Willis, who is likely to win a second term in office on Election Day, was asked about the sentencing of Mr. Hanson in the context of the increasingly harsh and violent rhetoric that has been part of this presidential campaign.
Without using Mr. Trump’s name, Ms. Willis appeared to speak of him. She said certain “leaders” did not bother to condemn racist statements, like the comments made by a comedian at Mr. Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.
“It’s sad that we don’t have leaders,” she said, who will “come out and say, ‘This is not acceptable.’”
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