A Trump 2020 Lawyer Could Be Part of Fulton County Criminal Probe

Attorney Ray Smith III, who represented Donald Trump in a legal battle to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results, might be a "target" in District Attorney Fani Willis’ Fulton County criminal probe, new court documents indicate.

Smith’s attorney, Bruce Morris, said recently his client is “something between a target and witness” in Willis’ investigation into whether Trump and allies tried to meddle with the 2020 election results, according to a motion filed in a different court case and first reported by Politico.

The new court filing is the latest indication that Willis’ investigation could have a long list of targets beyond Trump, including the so-called fake electors and attorneys like Smith, who worked on the then-president’s behalf to challenge the Georgia election results.

Smith was one of several lawyers who represented Trump in lawsuits after the 2020 election questioning the legitimacy of the election results. Judges across the country eventually dismissed dozens of those cases.

The disclosure about Smith came via a court filing on Wednesday in a Washington D.C.-based federal case focused on Rudy Giuliani. There, two former Georgia election workers allege the former New York mayor who was serving as a personal attorney for Trump defamed them.

Morris made the comment about his client being “between a target and a witness” after a plaintiff’s lawyers in the Giuliani case asked in April for Smith to sit for a deposition. 

Smith initially agreed he would sit for the deposition, according to the motion filed Wednesday by the plaintiff’s lawyers. But a couple weeks later, Smith’s lawyer Morris informed the plaintiff’s attorney that Smith would not be cooperating. 

“Mr. Morris indicated that they would file a motion to quash because Mr. Smith was ‘something between a target and witness’ in the Fulton County District Attorney’s investigation of the 2020 election,” plaintiff’s attorney John Langford wrote.

In Georgia, Willis since 2021 has been investigating Trump’s phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which Trump asked Raffensperger to “find” him the votes he would need to win the state. Her probe has since expanded to include other efforts to challenge the Georgia 2020 election results.The Fulton County district attorney recently said in a letter that she would make charging decisions in the case between July 11 and September 1.