Fani Willis gets all the headlines. Which is only fair. The Fulton County district attorney is the person who drove a two-and-a-half-year investigation into former President Donald Trump’s alleged attempt to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. It was Willis who, in August, delivered a criminal indictment of Trump and 18 codefendants on racketeering charges. And it is Willis who is on the receiving end of Trump’s verbal abuse.
But the surprising, rapid-fire run of recent guilty pleas by former Trump lawyers Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, and Jenna Ellis showcased a member of Willis’s team whom Trump and his remaining codefendants will be getting to know much better. Daysha Young, a tough-minded, experienced prosecutor who was speaking for the state of Georgia in those three court appearances, is the executive assistant district attorney. And Young, a Georgia defense lawyer says, is the kind of trial lawyer who can instill real fear in defendants.
Willis initially had some difficulty hiring a lead prosecutor after launching the investigation in February 2021, finally bringing in Nathan Wade, a longtime friend and a former municipal court judge who had worked primarily as a defense lawyer, heading a small firm that handled personal injury cases. There was skepticism in Georgia legal circles about whether Wade was a good choice to handle an intense, sprawling, high-profile prosecution, sources say.
Young, however, should be undaunted. She has spent years prosecuting grisly child abuse and sex crimes cases that attracted considerable media attention as the head of the Fulton County DA’s special victims division. In 2019, for example, Young won the conviction of two foster parents in the beating death of a two-year-old girl whose pancreas had been split and liver lacerated by blunt force trauma. The parents claimed the girl had choked on a chicken nugget.
Prosecuting the case against Trump should cause her relatively little discomfort. Young’s conspicuous recent court appearances were in the service of big wins. Powell led the post-election attack on Dominion Voting Systems and pressed for access to Georgia’s voting machines. She pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor counts of intentional election interference. Chesebro was charged with helping create a fake slate of Trump-supporting electors. He pleaded guilty to one felony conspiracy count. The next to fall was Ellis, who had spread unfounded election fraud claims. Ellis also pleaded guilty to a felony charge of aiding and abetting false statements and writings.
All three had leading roles in Trump’s attempts to negate his 2020 loss to Joe Biden, and all have agreed to cooperate with Willis’s prosecution. Exactly how much information they have to offer is unclear. But what’s certain is that three lawyers, advised by their own lawyers, decided to take guilty pleas, which will put pressure on Trump’s other codefendants to consider cutting similar deals—with Willis’s camp aggressively dangling those offers. David Wolfe, a top Georgia defense lawyer who used to represent Trump codefendants John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani in the case, says he’s unsure of what Powell, Chesebro, and Ellis might tell prosecutors but recognizes the import of these pleas. “They definitely have insight as to why they were doing what they were doing. And more importantly, they would have insight into who knew that they were doing it, and what the strategy was,” Wolfe tells VF.
Wolfe cautions that Young’s recent prominence in court might be mostly a formality: “Oftentimes third-year law students take pleas. It’s not rocket science.” Maybe. But Willis has an enormous amount invested in the Trump case and the district attorney understands the high stakes involved in every aspect. It’s unlikely that Willis, whose office did not respond to a request for comment, would have left anything to chance when dealing with the pivotal moves by Powell, Chesebro, and Ellis, including which prosecutor she wanted speaking for the DA’s office.
Young certainly sounded as if she was taking each step very seriously. On Tuesday, for instance, Ellis was tearful; Young was all business, declaring that “the false statements were made with reckless disregard for the truth,” and highlighting Ellis’s interactions with Giuliani. “I wrote a motion for [Giuliani] challenging the indictment, so I can’t say a whole lot about who might be the next person to fall, if you will,” Wolfe says. “I don’t see him and the former president entering pleas. But it’s entirely up to them.”
Perhaps not entirely. The evidence and leverage Willis, Young, and company are assembling as they roll up guilty pleas from codefendants might exert some influence too.
