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Willis has said her investigation will expand past Trump's call with Raffensperger to include any efforts to influence the election in Georgia. She is also investigating a phone call between Trump loyalist Sen. Lindsey Graham and Raffensperger, the abrupt departure of Byung "BJay" Pak, the US attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, and the false allegations of election fraud Rudy Giuliani made before Georgia legislators.

The former President's legal troubles began to mount in the wake of a stunning January 2 phone call. In the 62-minute call, Trump lambasted his fellow Republican for refusing to falsely say that Trump won the election in Georgia and repeatedly touted baseless claims of election fraud. "The people of Georgia are angry, the people of the country are angry. And there's nothing wrong with saying that, you know, um, that you've recalculated," Trump said in one part of the call.

"All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state," Trump said. A person familiar with the investigation said Willis will not hesitate to dig into the details surrounding the call, even if Trump's team tries to claim various types of privilege to shield the former President from investigative inquiries.

"The repeated calls sort of start to tell the story that this was not, again, an official trying to talk to another official about problems that he or she might see in an election," Michael J. Moore, the former US attorney for the Middle District of Georgia between 2010 and 2015 under President Barack Obama, told CNN. "They paint a picture about intent and that's an important element for every prosecutor."

"He might say, his lawyers might say, 'No, no, no. He's calling to complain. He's Kvetching. He's saying I got cheated,' " Williams said. Trump's defense could be, "I'm not calling him to ask him to cheat for me, I'm calling him to ask him to undo the cheating," Williams added. A spokesman for Trump did not respond to a request for comment for this story. In a previous statement to CNN on February 9, Trump's senior adviser Jason Miller said there was nothing "improper or untoward" about the call between Trump and Raffensperger.

In the final days of the Trump administration, after numerous public attacks from Trump following the election, some members of the Secretary of State's office retained attorneys out of fear the then-President could leverage resources for political retaliation, a source with the office told CNN. And while Republican officials in Georgia have been eager to move beyond the drama of the election, they are expected to be drawn back into the investigation as Willis runs down the details surrounding the call with Raffensperger, as well as outreach from Trump and his GOP allies to other state officials

Trump also had contact with Georgia's Attorney General Chris Carr and Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp.

Graham, a South Carolina Republican, was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee when he called Raffensperger on November 13 and inquired whether Raffensperger could discard all mail-in ballots from counties that had shown higher rates of unmatched signatures, the Republican secretary of state told the Washington Post at the time. Graham has denied the assertions from Raffensperger, who has stood firm on his account. Graham's spokesman Kevin Bishop has said that accusations that the senator's call was inappropriate were "ridiculous."

Willis has also expressed interest in exploring testimony from Giuliani before Georgia state senators, in which Giuliani promoted unfounded theories about why Trump won Georgia and a handful of other states that Trump had, in reality, lost. Giuliani told a room of mostly Republican lawmakers that Georgia's voting machines could not be trusted, tens of thousands of absentee ballots were illegally cast and not properly counted, and that the legislature should appoint its own electors who supported Trump. "It's your responsibility if a false and fraudulent count is submitted to the United States government, and it is clear that the count you have right now is false," Giuliani said during the hearing.

Giuliani said "the law gives you a lot of leeway to view the case in the light most favorable to your client."

"There are lots of different pieces and they're different acts and different people involved," Cunningham said. "Lawsuits all over the place, hoping to find a judge who would issue a temporary restraining order, asking a general assembly to intervene, of course raising all kinds of allegations of fraud, pressure threatening the Governor, threatening the Secretary of State."

While Willis wasted no time in launching her investigation into the former President, she said during the AP interview that she has no set timeline for completing her inquiry. "I'm in no rush," she said. "I think people think that I feel this immense pressure. I don't."

The revisions also come in the wake of a massive Vatican report last fall that found that the former Washington, D.C., archbishop, ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, had abused his authority to force seminarians to sleep with him

In a letter accompanying the document, Pope Francis reminded bishops that one of the aims of the revisions was "to reduce the number of cases in which the imposition of a penalty was left to the discretion of authorities."

In the new version, sexual abuse of minors – which previously had been included under the grouping of sins committed "against the sixth commandment," which prohibits sexual misconduct – has been placed under a new section, "Offenses against human life, dignity and liberty."

New articles stipulate that abuse can extend to adults, not just minors, and that laypeople in church offices can be punished for abusing minors as well as adults; forbid the possession of child pornography; and establish a newly defined crime of "grooming" of minors or vulnerable adults for sexual abuse.

the penalties include deprivation of office and potentially defrocking, one of the most severe punishments in canon law.

While the church has for centuries banned women from becoming priests, the previous code of 1983 said only that priestly ordination is reserved for a "baptized male." Now, there is a code that stipulates specifically that both the person who attempts to confer ordination on a woman and the woman herself incur automatic excommunication and that the cleric risks being defrocked.

In response, Kate McElwee, executive director of the Women's Ordination Conference, said in a statement that while not surprising, spelling it out as a new code is "a painful reminder of the Vatican's patriarchal machinery, and its far-reaching attempts to subordinate women."

The new Code of Canon Law will go into effect on Dec. 8.

"It was a powerful moment because he did his own eulogy."

The following day, Ester and a number of King supporters, gathered at the Lorraine Motel, where the civil rights leader was staying.

"Finally Dr. King arrives, and he said, 'When I entered into the city of Memphis, I was told about all of these threats. But none of that matters anymore 'cause I've been to the mountaintop,' " Ester said, paraphrasing his famous speech. "He proceeds in saying, 'If I don't get there with you, I want you to know that we as a people will get to the Promised Land.' "

"I'm looking, still, at Dr. King being thrown back and I take off and I run up the steps. And when I get up to where he's laying, I notice this pool of blood around his head,"

In that moment, kneeling over his body, Ester said King's fateful words from the night before were echoing in her head: I may not get there with you. I may not get there with you.

hate "took over." It stemmed, she said, from "white America [who] don't want to see us with freedom, so you take out our leader, our king."

"Every time I want to believe that Dr. King's life changed everything — I've witnessed George Floyds and so many others that have lost their lives," Ester said, referring to the man fatally killed by Minneapolis police last May.

Still, in contemplating what King's legacy has meant after decades of violence against Black people, Clara said, "You think that's gonna destroy his dream? Y'all are wrong. I think children years and years to come will continue to have his dream."

the Catholic Church became the most powerful institution of the medieval period.

After the prophet Muhammad’s death in 632 CE, Muslim armies conquered large parts of the Middle East, uniting them under the rule of a single caliph

Under the caliphs, great cities such as Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus fostered a vibrant intellectual and cultural life

Crusaders, who wore red crosses on their coats to advertise their status, believed that their service would guarantee the remission of their sins and ensure that they could spend all eternity in Heaven.

No one “won” the Crusades; in fact, many thousands of people from both sides lost their lives.

Romanesque cathedrals are solid and substantial: They have rounded masonry arches and barrel vaults supporting the roof, thick stone walls and few windows.

Gothic structures, such as the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis in France and the rebuilt Canterbury Cathedral in England, have huge stained-glass windows, pointed vaults and arches (a technology developed in the Islamic world), and spires and flying buttresses. In contrast to heavy Romanesque buildings, Gothic architecture seems to be almost weightless.

illuminated manuscripts: handmade sacred and secular books with colored illustrations, gold and silver lettering and other adornments.

Between 1347 and 1350, a mysterious disease known as the " Black Death " (the bubonic plague) killed some 20 million people in Europe—30 percent of the continent’s population.

Symptoms of the Black Death included fever, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, terrible aches and pains – and then death. Victims could go to bed feeling healthy and be dead by morning.

The plague killed cows, pigs, goats, chickens and even sheep, leading to a wool shortage in Europe.

Today, scientists know the plague was caused by a bacillus called Yersina pestis, which travels through the air and can also be contracted through the bite of an infected flea or rat, both of which were common in the Middle Ages, especially on ships. 

In a feudal society, the king granted large pieces of land called fiefs to noblemen and bishops. Landless peasants known as serfs did most of the work on the fiefs: They planted and harvested crops and gave most of the produce to the landowner. In exchange for their labor, they were allowed to live on the land.

By 1300, there were some 15 cities in Europe with a population of more than 50,000.

The Renaissance was a time of great intellectual and economic change, but it was not a complete “rebirth”: It had its roots in the world of the Middle Ages.

But the Secretariat of State is the most powerful Vatican office, coordinating the internal work of the Holy See bureaucracy as well as the Vatican’s diplomatic relations with other countries.

the tradition served “as a kind of safety valve that contained class resentments within clearly defined limits,” and thus, ultimately reinforced the hierarchy.

Christmas misrule was largely tolerated. After all, the birth of Jesus had been tacked onto pagan traditions that had existed for centuries.

So a period of gorging and resting was almost written into the stars, and most pagan European cultures had a holiday for this. In fact, Romans had been celebrating Saturnalia — a similar celebration of social inversion and orgiastic gluttony — for much longer before that.

December meant three things in early Europe: The work of harvesting the year’s crops was done, the beer and wine they’d been brewing was ready to drink, and it was cold enough to slaughter animals without the meat going immediately bad. December was often the only time of year when people got to eat fresh meat.

Puritans were fully aware of the non-Christian roots of Christmas, and unlike the Anglican church, they were having none of it

During Puritan rule of England in the mid-1600s, they attempted to make it illegal, scheduling Parliament to meet on Dec. 25 and ordering a day of fasting and repentance. They were met with riots and insurrection.

The Puritan ban on Christmas lasted much longer in New England, on paper from 1659 to 1681. But even after English authorities overturned the ban, it was still culturally taboo for well over a century afterward.