Georgia Senate committee investigates Fani Willis for fund misuse

A Georgia Senate committee investigating Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis held a hearing on Friday during which lawmakers scrutinized Willis’s use of taxpayer dollars.

The hearing marked the third of the year for the special committee, and it featured witnesses Robb Pitts and Sharon Whitmore, two Fulton County officials who spoke about Willis’s history of requesting county funds.

The hearing was a largely mellow event that dragged on for more than four hours, but it signaled state lawmakers were determined to understand the minutiae behind the process of funding the district attorney’s office while Willis is leading a prosecution against former President Donald Trump.

“This is really messing up my business,” Willis told a local outlet while the hearing was taking place. “They can look all they want. The DA’s office has done everything according to the books.”

Willis came under scrutiny for her use of funds after revelations surfaced last year that she had paid Nathan Wade, one of the special prosecutors leading the Trump case, a hefty hourly rate that amounted to more than $650,000 in less than two years.

Compounding matters, one of Trump’s co-defendants uncovered in January that Willis had been in a relationship with Wade, which transformed the case into a drama-filled examination of whether the relationship had caused a conflict of interest for Willis that warranted her disqualification from it. A judge determined that Willis could resolve the conflict of interest question by firing Wade, and Wade resigned immediately thereafter. Trump and his co-defendants are appealing the decision.

While Willis’s scandal with Wade has overshadowed much of her other work, the district attorney has also faced questions, including from Congress, about a whistleblower claim about her use of a $488,000 federal grant. The whistleblower, Amanda Timpson, accused Willis in January of firing her after Timpson raised concerns in 2021 that a Willis aide planned to use a portion of the grant for frivolous expenses, according to a Washington Free Beacon report.

Willis’s office has said the claim is inaccurate and that Timpson is a disgruntled employee who was fired “for cause.”

During Friday’s hearing, state Sen. Bill Cowsert, a Republican of Athens, asked tedious questions about how the committee could gather documentation about Wade’s compensation, what work he did, and when.

Cowsert also asked about numerous “enhancement requests,” that is, additional funding requests, that Willis has made during her tenure.

Asked about an enhancement request for roughly a million dollars made in 2023 for general trial expenses, Whitmore testified that Willis asked for a “lump sum, not specific with line item details.”

Cowsert replied that he was “just wanting us to get a feeling for exactly how much oversight there is.”

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“It sounds like it’s very loose as far as employment practices and expenditures for independent contractors,” Cowsert observed.

The special committee was approved in January to investigate misconduct allegations against Willis regarding “potential conflicts of interest and misuse of public funds, to enact new or amend existing laws and/or change state appropriations to restore public confidence in the criminal justice system,” according to a Senate website.