(Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis must turn over to Judicial Watch any records relating to her correspondence with House Democrats’ partisan Jan. 6 committee or corrupt special prosecutor Jack Smith, a judge ruled Tuesday.
The case brought by the good-government watchdog organization focused on Willis’s lawfare against Trump and 18 others, whom she claimed were part of a racketeering conspiracy to overturn the highly dubious and disputed outcome of the 2020 election in Georgia.
Investigations by the state Board of Elections subsequently found serious irregularities in Fulton County that likely swung the razor-thin advantage in favor of President Joe Biden and two Democratic senators, effectively flipping the historically red state.
Willis, a George Soros-backed prosecutor, campaigned on a “Get Trump” platform during the 2020 election and found the so-called evidence she needed to prosecute in a private phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger that occurred the day after she was sworn into office.
However, her case crumbled after focus shifted to her own ethical scandals, including an illicit affair with one of her lead prosecutors and allegations that the pair had inappropriately embezzled funds for personal expenses. Willis and her ex-lover, Nathan Wade, were also accused of colluding inappropriately with Democrats at the national level on the politically charged prosecutions.
In its open-records case, Judicial Watch initially asked for the documents in August 2023. Fulton County claimed there were no documents, according to a news release.
Judicial Watch sued Willis in March. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ordered Willis’s office to turn over the documents and awarded Judicial Watch attorney’s fees. A hearing on the fees is scheduled for Dec. 20.
McBurney also gave Willis’s office five days to hand over the correspondence.
Meanwhile, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Shukura Ingram heard a second case related to Willis’s lawfare against Trump—the challenge of a Georgia Senate subpoena of Willis—but did not indicate on Tuesday when she would rule on the subpoena.
Former Gov. Roy Barnes, in Tuesday’s hearing, claimed the subpoena of Willis from the Senate Special Committee on Investigations violated the state constitution.
The committee is tasked with determining if tax dollars were fraudulently used in President-elect Donald Trump prosecution.
Senate Resolution 465 alludes to a relationship between Willis and Wade that “would constitute a clear conflict of interest and a fraud upon the taxpayers of Fulton County and the State of Georgia.”
Willis did not respond to a subpoena from the committee to appear on Sept. 13 and challenged the case in court.
Barnes, representing Willis, told Ingram that the committee did not have the power to issue a subpoena. Subpoena power requires the agreement of both bodies of the General Assembly under the state’s constitution, according to Barnes.
“You can investigate until the cows come home, but you can’t subpoena anybody,” Barnes said. “There’s a reason. And you know what the reason was because from time to time one body of the General Assembly could go crazy.”
Josh Belinfante, representing the Senate, refuted Barnes’s claims that the resolution was made at the “behest” of Trump, noting that there were nine committee members and that the resolution focused on hiring practices for assistant district attorneys.
“The General Assembly has looked at similar things in the past,” Belinfante said, citing previous legislative action that scrutinized the hiring of special district attorneys on contingency.
