Tipsheet

Whistleblower Tears Fani Willis a New One

Mia Cathell
Mia Cathell  |  February 05, 2024 6:45 AM

An ex-employee of Fani Willis, who was fired after she blew the whistle on the Fulton County district attorney's office allegedly mishandling federal funds, has leaked an audio recording of an implicating conversation that's now come back to haunt Willis.

According to a bombshell report published by The Washington Free Beacon, years before Willis's lover Nathan Wade brought criminal charges against former President Donald Trump, the newly elected Democrat DA privately met with Amanda Timpson, who was previously the office's Juvenile Diversions Programs manager in charge of diverting non-violent juvenile offenders toward "alternatives to the juvenile court system." There, Timpson told Willis she was punitively demoted after attempting to stop a top Willis campaign aide from misusing federal grant money meant for Fulton County's creation of a youth advocacy center.

Timpson stated that Michael Cuffee, formerly the Willis campaign's social media manager, planned to spend part of a $488,594 federal grant—earmarked to help at-risk youth in the community—on ineligible expenses, such as Macbooks, "swag," and travel.

When confronted about the alleged spending scheme and warned by Timpson that it was illegal, Cuffee claimed the purchases were part of Willis's "vision," Timpson said. Cuffee, serving as Timpson's supervisor, then removed her from the youth program.

"He wanted to do things with grants that were impossible, and I kept telling him, like, 'We can't do that,'" Timpson told Willis during the meeting back on Nov. 19, 2021. "He told everybody [...] 'We're going to get MacBooks, we're going to get swag, we're going to use it for travel.' I said, 'You cannot do that. It's a very, very specific grant.'" Willis didn't outright deny the accusations.

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"I respect that is your assessment..." Willis replied. "And I'm not saying that your assessment is wrong."

Willis went on to apologize to Timpson, stating that Cuffee had "failed" her administration.

However, she changed her tune not long afterward. Less than two months later, Willis abruptly terminated Timpson and had her escorted out of the office by a cadre of armed investigators, Timpson said. "I am 4'11" on my best day," Timpson told The Washington Free Beacon. "Who is so scared of me that you have to walk me out of the building by seven armed investigators?" she questioned. "I've never had a warning about any negative behavior that would warrant someone feeling threatened by me."

In an interview with The Washington Free Beacon, Cuffee disputed Timpson's version of the incident.

Cuffee, the Chief Programs Director, acknowledged he had discussed buying computers for the youth center, but insisted he was merely proposing to pull funds from elsewhere to finance the purchase. "This is just a money grab for Timpson," stated Cuffee, who said he had left the DA's office in December 2021 for "personal" reasons. "She can do what she needs to do," Cuffee added.

County documents reviewed by The Washington Free Beacon confirm that the grant in question was not supposed to be spent on computers or other items. Nevertheless, following Timpson's firing, in November 2022, Willis's office used $1,245 of the federal grant funding to buy Dell products, spending records show. This even though the center itself was never opened, and the county-owned building slated to house it remains closed to the public, guarded by padlocked gates, The Free Beacon reported.

For the fiscal year 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice awarded Willis's office the federal grant to establish the Fulton County Center of Youth Empowerment and Gang Prevention "to work with boys and girls ages 12-17 who are at risk of joining gangs, were exposed to gang violence or victimized by criminal street gangs, or seeking assistance in removing themselves from gang activity," according to the award information outlined by the DOJ's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

This initiative, through federal funding by the DOJ grant, was intended to "establish a community network...in Fulton County to identify and address service gaps and barriers and create a comprehensive system of service for youth at risk of becoming gang involved or continuing in the gang lifestyle." Services were supposed to include cognitive behavioral therapy and counseling.

Timpson sued Willis in August 2022 alleging wrongful termination, claiming she was fired as retribution for uncovering the misappropriation plans. Timpson's case, a whistleblower lawsuit seeking damages for lost wages, is in the discovery process.

In response, a spokesperson for Willis's office issued a press statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, dismissing Timpson as "a holdover from the prior administration." (Timpson was hired under incumbent Paul Howard, whom Willis ousted in 2020.) Timpson's "failure to meet the standards of the new administration led to her termination," the Willis spokesperson said, claiming that management tried to find a position Timpson could fill, but was "unsuccessful" after transferring her three times within the DA's office. All of Timpson's supervisors "found her performance to be inadequate," the representative claimed.

"I’m not a holdover. There were no holdovers," Timpson said, stating Willis picked her out of a pool of 400 applicants.

Although she has since secured letters of recommendation from over 20 associates, including an endorsement from Fulton County Deputy District Attorney Natalie Zellner, who applauded Timpson's leadership for being "a critical component" in securing the OJJDP anti-gang programming grant, Timpson said Willis has made it hard for her to find employment. "It was, honestly, tormenting," Timpson stated. "Someone in a position of power is saying this about me and I have no way to combat it."

In November, Timpson's attorneys dropped a libel-and-defamation suit against Willis because the elected official possesses wide-ranging protections from such claims. Timpson still plans to file a similar suit against the DA's office in the foreseeable future.

Timpson started working for the DA's office as Director of Gang Prevention and Intervention in 2018. Following her victory, DA-elect Willis tapped Timpson to join her 2021 Executive Leadership Team, a select assembly of staffers tasked with playing "a critical role of changing and rebranding the culture in [the DA's] office." Timpson soon noticed suspicious activity happening.

In July 2021, Timpson also discovered that several out-of-state students were participating in Willis's federally funded Junior District Attorney Program, which is offered exclusively to middle-schoolers attending Fulton County and Atlanta public schools.

Timpson initially approached Willis on July 26, 2021, to discuss her concerns regarding the DOJ gang prevention grant as well as the in-county junior DA programming. Willis wanted to hear nothing of it, Timpson said, and she was subsequently punished with a demotion. "I wanted to make sure she knew because I didn't want any scandal to be related to her," Timpson stated. "She immediately cut me off in the middle of my sentence and demoted me from the director of juvenile diversion to a file clerk."

So, for her next attempt, Timpson brought a recorder to tape the aforementioned (second) meeting with Willis in November 2021 when she sounded the alarm again about alleged financial malfeasance in the administration. "I knew it was me against the entire office," Timpson said. "If I didn't get any hard evidence about what I was saying, everyone was just going to write me off."

During the taped talk, Timpson told Willis that Cuffee took her off projects, "tell[ing] people I wasn't doing what I was supposed to because I questioned him—because I understood. I helped write that grant; I knew what was in that grant [...] He made it look as if I wasn't doing what I needed to do because I questioned him—because I knew for a fact Mr. Cuffee, respectfully, did not know what he was doing, period." Speaking from "one woman to another," Timpson told Willis: Cuffee is "dangerous to your administration [...] When I reached out to you, he told me, 'Oh, you think your word is safe? Exactly when you reached out to Ms. Willis, she called me and told me...everything. Once you reach out to her, she's going to reach back out to me.'"

"I didn't even feel safe going to anybody," an emotional Timpson said, audibly breaking down in tears.

"I guess that's an intimidation tactic," Willis said of Cuffee's threats against Timpson. "I'm sorry that you felt that way."

On Dec. 7, 2021, Timpson sent a follow-up email to Willis, reiterating her suspicions that federal funds were being misappropriated by the DA's office. "I have been humiliated and retaliated against for doing the right thing," Timpson wrote, "trying to protect your administration from scandal and advocate for the youth I was charged with working on behalf of."

"[M]y goal was never to negatively affect your reputation, but to seek justice for the 8 months of hell this office put me through. From the onset of this situation[,] I attempted to make you aware of what I saw to be a dangerous situation, where funds were being misappropriated, and I was being thrown under the bus for as the 'fall guy' [...] understand the events that have taken place in this administration were both illegal, unethical and unfair..." Timpson typed in the high-priority email addressed to Willis.

Willis never responded to the email, titled "IMPORTANT Please Read!" Timpson was fired without justification on Jan. 14, 2022. "[Y]ou serve as an at-will employee...[and] your services may be terminated with or without cause," read Timpson's termination letter signed by Willis. "Please accept this correspondence as notice that your services to this office are no longer needed."

Willis, who campaigned on the promise to "restore integrity" to the DA's office, is embroiled in a separate scandal involving the special prosecutor she had hired on a lucrative contract to lead the Trump prosecution. Willis admitted to having an affair with Wade, a married man with little prosecutorial experience, in a court filing Friday, though she refused to accept any wrongdoing and asked a judge to "summarily" dismiss motions to disqualify her from the Trump case without holding an evidentiary hearing.

Willis and Wade, who's charging the county $250 an hour for his work, a bill that has amounted to more than $654,000 in income, are accused of similar allegations of misusing taxpayer dollars on lavish vacations the two allegedly took together as lovers.

Timpson pointed to "a pattern" of financial impropriety exhibited in Willis's conduct.

"My case and Nathan Wade's case are very similar when you break them down point by point," the whistleblower told The Washington Free Beacon, naming: "Ethical violations, abuse of power, and the misuse of county, state, and federal funds."

It was not the first instance of Willis dipping into federal grants to splurge on tech and travel (via The Washington Free Beacon):

In 2020, the DA's office received a $2 million grant from the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative to help clear the Atlanta Police Department's rape kit backlog. Willis's office has since pulled nearly $13,000 from the grant to purchase computers and spent an additional $27,000 on airfare, hotels, and car rentals, according to Fulton County records.

Willis's office has also purchased computers using grants from the Georgia Innocence Project, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Program, and federal funds appropriated under the Violence Against Women Act, according to spending records. It's not clear if computers are allowable expenditures in any of the grants.

On the same day as Willis's admission of the affair, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent a subpoena to Willis, demanding documents related to the DA's office allegedly exploiting the DOJ grant to squander federal funding on "unrelated, frivolous" expenditures. "These allegations raise serious concerns about whether you were appropriately supervising the expenditure of federal grant funding allocated to your office and whether you took actions to conceal your office's unlawful use of federal funds," Jordan wrote in Friday's congressional letter to Willis. The subpoena instructs Willis to produce all documentation and communications in "unredacted form." She has until Feb. 23 to respond with the requested records.