Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis gives testimony during a hearing on the Georgia election interference case, Feb. 15, 2024, in Atlanta. (Alyssa Pointer/Pool Photo via AP)
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis responded firmly to congressional GOP attempts to investigate her office, vowing to continue with the racketeering (RICO) and election subversion case against former President Donald Trump.
The letter is the latest development in the disagreement between the district attorney and House Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, regarding extensive document requests.
“[L]et 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 wrote on March 25.
The dispute began in August 2023, when the committee asked Willis for files related to her office’s “receipt and use of federal grant funds issued by the U.S. Department of Justice.”
Two additional letters requesting the same materials followed in September and December of last year.
Willis and since-axed, then-lead prosecutor Nathan Wade responded to Jordan’s requests on numerous occasions — denouncing any suggestion of wrongdoing and characterizing the underlying allegations as mainly a political witch hunt intended to obstruct her prosecution.
In February, Jordan issued a subpoena for documents related to allegations that the district attorney’s office “has misused federal funding.”
Willis responded in late February, aiming to provide background to the entire federal funds issue as a result of a lawsuit filed by a disgruntled former employee who was “terminated for cause.”
Simultaneously, the district attorney’s office began reacting to the subpoena by producing about three dozen documents. Additionally, Willis stated her office would continue producing any relevant documents to the committee on an ongoing basis.
Earlier this month, Jordan sent Willis another letter, alleging the district attorney’s office had “failed to produce” responsive documents in response to five broad categories of requests.
In the March 14 letter, Jordan gave Willis a deadline to provide congressional investigators with those requested documents by noon on March 28, or, “the Committee will consider taking further action, such as the invocation of contempt of Congress proceedings.”
Willis dismissed that contempt threat in her Monday response.
“I categorically reject the assertion that this office is deficient in responding to the Committee’s subpoena,” Willis wrote in the letter.
Attached to the letter was additional production in response to some of Jordan’s recent “priority” requests — along with a promise to provide investigators with additional documents “in the coming weeks.”
Willis also used the opportunity to criticize Jordan for the basis of his recent complaints — portraying the threat of contempt as an entirely disproportionate reaction to the alleged deficiency.
“Your main complaint seems to be that we didn't finish producing your extensive document requests (including five categories of documents over a four-year period) in less than two months,” the most recent letter explains. “That request is unreasonable and not customary, and would require this government office to redirect resources from our main purpose of prosecuting crime.”
Willis repeated her opinion that Jordan is involved in little more than a thinly-disguised effort to sideline her office’s work on the RICO case.
“Let me be clear, while we are complying with your subpoena in good faith and with proper care, we will not redirect resources that undermine our responsibility to the people of Fulton County to prosecute felonies committed in this jurisdiction,” the letter continues. “We will not stop this office’s efforts to prosecute crime — including gang activity, acts of violence, and public corruption — to meet unreasonable deadlines in your politically motivated ‘investigation’ of this office.”