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Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis testifies 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 shot back at congressional GOP efforts to investigate her office in a strongly-worded letter promising to move forward with the racketeering (RICO) and election subversion case against former President Donald Trump.
The missive is the latest in the back-and-forth squabbling between the district attorney and House Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, over extensive document production 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 contretemps 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 asking for substantially the same materials followed in September and December of last year.
Willis and since-axed, then-lead prosecutor Nathan Wade replied to Jordan’s requests on numerous occasions — decrying any notion of wrongdoing and categorizing the underlying allegations as little more than a political witch hunt intended to hamstring her prosecution.
In February, Jordan issued a subpoena for documents relevant to allegations the district attorney’s office “has misused federal funding.”
More Law&Crime coverage: Trump attorney in Georgia RICO case tells judge charges should be dismissed because they are all based on ‘political speech’ that is fully ‘protected’ by the 1st Amendment
Willis wrote back in late February, seeking to contextualize the entire federal funds issue as the byproduct of a lawsuit filed by a disgruntled former employee who was “terminated for cause.”
At the same time, the district attorney’s office began responding to the subpoena by producing around three dozen documents. Additionally, Willis said her office would continue producing any such relevant documents to the committee on a rolling 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.
Willis also took the opportunity to chide Jordan for the basis of his recent complaints — casting the threat of contempt as a wholly incommensurate reaction to the purported deficiency.
“Your primary complaint appears to be that we did not complete the production of your extensive document demands (including five categories of documents over a four-year period) in less than two months,” the latest letter goes on. “That demand is unreasonable and uncustomary and would require this government office to divert resources from our primary purpose of prosecuting crime.”
Willis reiterated her view that Jordan is engaged in little more than a thinly-veiled attempt to sideline her office’s work on the RICO case.
“Let me be clear, while we are abiding by your subpoena in good faith and with due diligence, we will not divert resources that undermine our duty to the people of Fulton County to prosecute felonies committed in this jurisdiction,” the letter continues. “We will not shut down 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.”
