Fani Willis fights back against Republican-led Georgia Senate probe

ATLANTA (CN) — Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who led the 2020 election interference case against President Donald Trump, refuted accusations that she misused public funds or initiated her investigation for political motives during a long-awaited appearance in front of a Georgia Senate committee Wednesday.

Her testimony has been sought by the Republican-led Special Senate Committee on Investigations for the past year, as it was created to investigate Willis’ prosecutorial conduct amid Trump’s efforts to disqualify her.

“If you recall the facts, I was already district attorney when this all came to light,” Willis said. “The people of Fulton County have elected me to make these choices, and the people and county are safer because I make them.”

Willis and her attorney, former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes, criticized the committee’s questioning for lacking any purpose toward their roles as lawmakers, who are supposed to utilize special committees to assist them in drafting state laws.

Despite her removal from the case in September and the ensuing dismissal last month by an alternate prosecutor, the special committee continued to fight for Willis’ testimony, which she argued is a political effort to cast doubt upon her prosecution of Trump and others who sought to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.

“I know you think you are above the law, but you are not,” Barnes told the special committee. “This is a witch hunt.”

Of the seven committee members, four of them are Republicans running for statewide office, including state Senator Greg Dokezal, who chaired the meeting and is running for lieutenant governor.

Chairman Bill Cowsert has made his investigation of Willis and criticism of Democratic prosecutors the centerpieces of his current bid to be elected as Georgia’s attorney general. He did not attend Wednesday’s meeting because of a medical procedure he had last week, Dokezal said.

Cowsert was called out by Willis, who said he falsely claimed in a previous committee meeting that she had met with former Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, whom she insisted she has never met.

“I think you are making laws that are supposed to be in the benefit of the community as opposed to this day where we are wasting a lot of time, when me and my staff could be keeping the community safe. But I’m here to do this song and dance with you,” Willis said.

“The reality is I brought forth an indictment because people came to my county, they committed a crime and they got charged. They didn’t get charged because of their race, they didn’t get charged because of their political party — they got charged because they came into my community and committed a crime and two grand juries passed an indictment,” she added.

When asked about the duties of her role as district attorney of Georgia’s most populous county, Willis explained how the office was in “chaos” when she took it over in 2021 due to massive case backlogs stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic. She said her primary concern when elected was resolving the roughly 200 pending murder cases her office faced and hiring efficient staff to take them on.

The Democrat emphasized that the racketeering indictment against Trump and 18 of his allies was approved by a Fulton County grand jury that believed there was sufficient evidence to pursue prosecution. She noted that many of the defendants were also indicted in separate states, including Arizona and Wisconsin.

Willis was questioned about her decision to hire Nathan Wade as the special counsel for the election interference case, as well as how much he was paid to do so.

The Georgia Court of Appeals ordered for Willis to be removed from the case following a state judge’s finding of “an appearance of impropriety” over her personal — and temporarily romantic — relationship with Wade.

She said all of the other attorneys in her office who would be qualified to take on such a high-profile case were already working on other major projects at the time, and that it was difficult to retain an appropriate outside attorney who was willing to accept the decrease in pay.

Dokezal questioned how much Wade was paid for his work on the case. Willis answered that his compensation was handled by the county and ended up being significantly lower than what he was previously making as a well-established private attorney.

The senator also inquired about documents that revealed Wade and other attorneys working on the case had traveled to D.C., asking whether her office was communicating with the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

“The criminals I indicted committed crimes all over the country,” Willis said. “They went to find information about people who came to Georgia and committed crimes.”

Willis noted that she has faced continuous threats in response to her prosecution and has been alerted by the Justice Department about individuals swatting her home. She urged the committee to look into protecting public officials so that they may perform their jobs safely, using former Republican State Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s recent resignation amid threats against her family as another example.

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