DA won’t prosecute arrested lawmaker

Fulton County’s district attorney said Wednesday that she won’t prosecute the Democratic lawmaker who was arrested last month after she knocked repeatedly on the door of Gov. Brian Kemp’s state office as he was on live television touting a sweeping new elections law.

District Attorney Fani Willis said she considers the case closed after reviewing the evidence surrounding the March 25 arrest of state Rep. Park Cannon of Atlanta, adding that she will not be presenting the case to a grand jury.

“While some of Rep. Cannon’s colleagues and the police officers involved may have found her behavior annoying, such sentiment does not justify a presentment to a grand jury of the allegations in the arrest warrants or any other felony charges,” Willis said.

Cannon said she did nothing to warrant the two felony charges she faced after she rapped on the door outside the governor’s private second-floor office while he was making remarks touting a Republican-backed law that includes restrictions on voting. She was charged with obstruction of law enforcement and disrupting the General Assembly.

A Georgia State Patrol lieutenant said memories of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol were on his mind when he arrested Cannon. He said in a 13-page incident report that he was worried that other protesters would have been “emboldened” to follow her after she refused his requests to stop knocking on Kemp’s door.

Witnesses interviewed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, however, said there was no attempt to “breach” the doorway.

“Nobody touched that door. We didn’t go anywhere near that door. We followed the police officers who were taking Park into the elevator,” said Tamara Stevens, an activist who was with Cannon and filmed the encounter.