Former Trump lawyer emerges as challenger to Atlanta district attorney

A Republican lawyer who worked in both the Trump White House and the Trump campaign said Friday that she is running to dethrone Fani T. Willis, the embattled Atlanta prosecutor who brought the election interference case against the former president in Georgia.

The challenger, Courtney A. Kramer, 30, qualified Friday to run for Fulton County district attorney. As a little-known candidate and Republican, she faces long odds in the heavily Democratic country: former President Donald J. Trump won only 26 percent of the vote in 2020.

But she could potentially raise large sums of money from Trump supporters across the country, receive airtime on conservative media outlets and use the fame to cast doubt on Trump’s prosecution ahead of the November election.

Ms. Kramer is also likely to amplify criticism of Ms. Willis, who is the subject of a disqualification effort, backed by lawyers, for Mr. Trump and his co-defendants.

The biography on Ms. Kramer’s LinkedIn page lists numerous MAGA references. She served as an intern in the White House Counsel’s Office during the Trump administration and later as a litigation adviser for the Trump campaign’s legal team in Georgia after the 2020 election as it tried to keep him in power despite his loss.

She worked at a company run by Ray Smith III, one of Trump’s co-defendants in the election case. She also worked as a special counsel for the Georgia Republican Party when it was led by David Shafer, another co-defendant in the Trump case. Her resume also includes a year as executive director of True the Vote, an organization spreading misinformation about the 2020 election.

Ms. Kramer said in a brief interview with reporters on Friday that the catalyst for her campaign was the August indictment of Mr. Trump and 18 of his allies, who were accused of conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. (Four defendants have now pleaded guilty.)

She described the charges as the “moment where I said I had had enough,” adding: “The resources used for that investigation could have been used for many other things, which would have been much more beneficial to the citizens of Fulton. District.”

The candidacy is another headache for Ms. Willis, a Democrat who took office in January 2021. A judge has said he will rule this month on the disqualification petitions, which allege Ms Willis created a conflict of interest by receiving gifts from a romantic. partner she hired to manage the Trump case. Ms Willis denies there is a conflict of interest and is fighting to stay on the case.

Ms. Kramer would not say whether she would dismiss the charges against Trump if elected. However, she said of Mr. Trump: “I don’t think he broke the law.” She also said that if Ms. Willis is not disqualified, it would “set a terrible precedent for prosecutors across the state and across the country.”

A Democratic challenger to Ms. Willis also qualified for Friday’s vote. Christian Wise Smith, a former prosecutor, ran unsuccessfully for Fulton County district attorney in 2020 and for Georgia attorney general in 2022.

After qualifying, Mr Smith said he registered to keep his options open and was unsure whether he would actually campaign for the job.

Election day for the district attorney race is November 5, the same day voters will go to the polls to make their choice for president.