Threatened with contempt of Congress proceedings, Fani Willis responded to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH)'s subpoena by calling the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee's investigation into the Fulton County district attorney's office a "politically motivated" probe.
"We will not shut down this office's efforts to prosecute crime—including [...] public corruption—to meet unreasonable deadlines in your politically motivated 'investigation' of this office," Willis wrote Monday in a letter to Jordan, the committee's chairman.
Fulton County DA Fani Willis responds to GOP Rep. Jim Jordan’s demand for documents but calls his ‘investigation’ of her office “politically motivated.” pic.twitter.com/x672ZhbjIP
— Zachary Cohen (@ZcohenCNN) March 27, 2024
Earlier this month, Jordan warned Willis he'd invoke contempt of Congress proceedings against her if she continued to be uncooperative with the congressional committee's investigation. Willis repeatedly failed to hand over documents Jordan had subpoenaed related to her office's receipt and use of federal funds allocated by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
"Georgians deserve to know where their federal tax dollars are going," Jordan said, adding: "Contempt is on the table."
In response, Willis called the congressman's documents demand an "unreasonable" and "uncustomary" request that would require her office to "divert resources from our primary purpose of prosecuting crime." She reiterated: "[W]e will not divert resources that undermine our duty to the people of Fulton County to prosecute felonies committed in this jurisdiction."
Still, she attached some documents and indicated that more material is forthcoming, noting that her office is "in the process" of producing the requested records "on a rolling basis" and is undertaking "a good-faith effort" to provide them "with due diligence."
"However, let me again state this clearly: nothing that you do will derail the efforts of my staff and I to bring the election interference prosecution to trial so that a jury of Fulton County citizens can determine the guilt or innocence of the defendants," Willis told Jordan. "My family, staff and I have been threatened repeatedly by people making violent, often racist, attacks. Neither those threats, nor anything your colleagues and you say or do, will deter us from fulfilling our duty to bring this case to trial."
Jordan's subpoena was issued in the wake of a whistleblower coming forward to accuse the Willis administration of squandering a DOJ grant—meant to fund the creation of a youth advocacy center—on ineligible expenses, such as "swag" and travel. The ex-employee was fired after sounding the alarm on a top Willis campaign aide allegedly wanting to misuse the federal grant money.
For fiscal year 2020, the DOJ gave the DA's office a $488,000-plus federal grant to establish the Fulton County Center of Youth Empowerment and Gang Prevention to help teenagers at risk of joining gangs, exposed to gang violence, victimized by criminal street gangs, or in need of help with leaving the gang lifestyle, according to the award information outlined by the DOJ's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Services were supposed to include counseling. However, the center never opened.
Instead of using the federal funding to aid at-risk youth, the DA's office sought to exploit the DOJ grant, says former Willis staffer Amanda Timpson. She recorded an implicating conversation with Willis when the pair privately met in 2021 to discuss her concerns about financial malfeasance in the Democrat DA's office. Willis didn't outright deny Timpson's accusations.
BREAKING: @FreeBeacon has obtained audio of a whistleblower privately warning Fani Willis in 2021 that her top aide was trying to misuse federal funds.
— Andrew Kerr (@AndrewKerrNC) January 31, 2024
Willis did not dispute the allegations.
56 days later, Willis fired the whistleblower and perp walked her out of the office. pic.twitter.com/YEkKIB2L5f
Less than two months later, Willis abruptly terminated Timpson and had her escorted out of the office by a cadre of armed investigators, Timpson told The Washington Free Beacon. Timpson has since sued Willis for wrongful termination, claiming she was fired as retribution for uncovering the alleged misappropriation plans and attempting to prevent misuse of taxpayer dollars.
Willis was implicated in a separate scandal involving her lover, then-special prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom she hired to prosecute former President Donald Trump on Georgia RICO charges. Pocketing over $650,000 for his work on the Trump case, Wade spent portions of his taxpayer-funded paychecks on wooing Willis with Caribbean cruises and stays at high-end resorts.
However, the Fulton County judge overseeing hearings addressing the slew of prosecutorial misconduct claims decided not to disqualify Willis because he didn't find an "actual" conflict of interest that arose from the affair. Willis was given the option to either fire Wade or remove herself from the prosecution in order to remedy "an appearance of impropriety" that remained. Within hours of the judge's ruling, Wade resigned, allowing Willis to stay and keeping the Trump case on track ahead of Election Day.
Following the non-disqualification decision, Willis said "The train is coming" for Trump and his 14 remaining co-defendants.
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