(Johnny Edwards, The Center Square) The Georgia district attorney who took on Donald Trump, only to be removed from the case over a romance with her lead co-counsel, likely spent millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on the years-long racketeering prosecution. And taxpayers might be on the hook for millions more.
But DA Fani Willis and the Fulton County government that sets her budget have not provided an exact total despite repeated requests by The Center Square.
What’s certain is that taxpayers of the state’s most populous county shelled out huge amounts in the ill-fated case. The indictment accused then-former President Trump and 18 other people of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election.
Online county records show $1.2 million in payments have gone to law firms of the three outside attorneys hired to assist Willis in the case – though how much of that was exclusively for work on the election interference case isn’t clear. Because of a recent change in state law concerning disqualified prosecutors, taxpayers could also be stuck paying nearly $17 million in defendants’ legal fees, including President Trump’s, though the county’s lawyers are fighting that.
Also unclear is how much the case launched in 2021 has cost the county internally. Those costs would include work hours for prosecutors, investigators and other staff; travel expenses; working meals; security; media management; and the cost of empaneling a special grand jury, among other things. The DA’s office has not provided any records describing those costs despite an open records request The Center Square filed, instead pushing off the timeline to respond by months.
“There is somebody in some department in Fulton County that could figure out the DA’s cost for that prosecution,” Danny Porter, the former district attorney for neighboring Gwinnett County told The Center Square. “Whether there’s anybody sitting around in that office with that figure in their head is another matter.”
The case ultimately produced four guilty pleas, but no jail time. Sentences included probation, fines, restitution, community service, letters of apology and cooperation agreements. Then the case ground to a crawl after another defendant accused Willis of a romantic entanglement with outside counsel Nathan Wade, who was being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the county at the time.
The case went further into limbo when Trump won reelection. It fizzled completely late last year when a new prosecutor dismissed all the charges, clearing the highest-profile defendants including Trump, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
Among his reasons for dismissal, Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, cited weaknesses in the charges and the practical impossibility of prosecuting a sitting president.
Neither DA Willis nor her on-staff spokesman, Jeff DiSantis, responded to interview requests or requests for information from The Center Square for this story. Nor did attorney Wade.
“It would be very embarrassing for the DA’s office to disclose how much time, resources and effort were spent on this case that amounted to essentially nothing,” said defense attorney Manny Arora, whose client Kenneth Chesebro pleaded guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents. “The taxpayers have a right to know.”
But Fulton County Commissioner Marvin Arrington Jr., who Willis has endorsed in his current bid for the Commission Chairman’s seat, described the case as anything but a waste, leading to multiple convictions. Some extra costs included added security after the DA started getting death threats, he said.
“Our job as commissioners is to give her a budget,” Arrington told The Center Square. “And how she manages that budget is up to her.”
Willis’ office opened its criminal investigation in 2021, about a month after a recorded call where Trump told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, “I just want to find 11,780 votes.”
Since that year, the District Attorney’s Office annual budget has grown from $26.3 million to $39.4 million in 2026, according to Fulton County budget records.
Two of the seven elected commissioners – both Republicans – say they’ve made attempts to find out how much of that money went into prosecuting Trump and his co-defendants. Commissioner Bob Ellis tried in vain to calculate it himself, but couldn’t reach a reliable estimate, according to his chief of staff. The other commissioner, Bridget Thorne, said she asked Willis directly.
“Taxpayers certainly didn’t get anything back from it,” Thorne told The Center Square. “If anything, they got things taken away from it. Courts that weren’t moving, cases that weren’t being indicted, people that were in jail too long, overcrowding the jail, people dying in our jail, filing lawsuits.”
Thorne said her last attempt to get an answer was in late 2023 – well before the Georgia Court of Appeals removed Willis from prosecuting the case due to an “appearance of impropriety.” The state Supreme Court declined to hear Willis’ appeal.
Thorne, who represents a suburban area north of Atlanta, said she spoke to the DA about the cost of the case in a Zoom meeting, at a time when Willis was seeking millions of dollars extra added to her budget.
“The response was that Lady Justice has no price,” she told The Center Square.
Thorne said when she asked Willis specifically about payments to Wade, Willis accused her of only caring because Wade is black. Thorne said she didn’t know Wade’s race at the time.
After discussing another outside attorney who is white, Willis abruptly ended the Zoom call, Thorne said.
Weeks later, Willis called out the commissioner by name during a speech at Big Bethel AME church’s annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. memorial service, saying, “Why does Commissioner Thorne and so many others question my decision in a special counsel?” Recordings of the speech remain up on YouTube.
“That kind of put me in a bad position, because she was insinuating that I was racist in my conversations,” the commissioner told The Center Square.
This year, The Center Square has been asking the same question, only to be repeatedly rebuffed.
In January, the newswire filed a request with the District Attorney’s Office under the Georgia Open Records Act, seeking any records showing a tally of total expenses in the racketeering case titled State of Georgia v. Donald J. Trump, et al. The Center Square also asked for a full accounting of costs connected to the three special prosecutors Willis hired to assist in the case.
Georgia law says government agencies must turn over public records within three business days, or if the agency needs more time, to provide a timetable for when the records will be available.
The DA’s office has instead pushed off the request three times, saying it’s “experiencing high volume.” Twice the office asked for an extra month to respond, then last month it asked for up to six weeks more.
“Additional time is needed to fulfill your open records request,” said the last message delaying the request, sent on April 20. “We anticipate an update or response will be forwarded to you within 30 business days or no later than 5:00 p.m. on June 2, 2026. We appreciate your continued patience.”
The Center Square also tried to obtain a tally from the county government itself, requesting from the Finance Department records of all invoices the DA’s office submitted for payment that were connected to the Trump prosecution. The county responded that it has no such records because Finance doesn’t track which invoices go with which cases being handled by the DA’s office.
Porter, the former Gwinnett County prosecutor, said without the Fulton DA’s cooperation deciphering the total cost of the election interference case would be a Herculean effort involving multiple open records requests for invoices and line-item analysis of several years of DA’s office budgets. It could be done, he said, but “may take a forensic accountant.”
Some costs, though, are laid out in Fulton County’s Open Checkbook.
According to the online database, payments to the Law Offices of Nathan J. Wade from 2022 to 2024 total $770,381. Wade did not respond to a message seeking to confirm how much of that sum was for the Trump case.
In the same years, payments to two law firms of another special prosecutor, Anna Cross, total $132,378. She also did not respond to an inquiry about the total sum associated with the racketeering prosecution.
Payments to Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore, the law firm of outside attorney John Floyd, total $291,447 from 2022 to 2025. However, most of that may be for other cases.
Floyd told The Center Square he advised and assisted the Fulton County DA’s office on several racketeering prosecutions over that timespan, and the bills in Open Checkbook aren’t separated by cases. He said he couldn’t venture a guess as to how much of the total sum was for the election interference case alone.
Potentially driving the total price tag even higher, a new law signed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp last year allows criminal defendants to recoup “reasonable costs” if their case is dismissed due to prosecutorial misconduct. Fourteen former defendants in the case requested that taxpayers reimburse a total $16.85 million in legal fees. Trump’s claims account for $6.2 million of that.
With that legal battle at the Court of Appeals, the county commission could formally ask Willis to come up with a total cost of the election interference case. Thorne said that won’t happen because of the seven commission seats, four are held by Democrats, two by Republicans, and one is vacant.
Among the Democrats, Commissioner Arrington said he’s not asking for the total cost of the Trump case, partly because commissioners haven’t asked for the total cost of any other prosecutions.
“I can’t second guess what someone else does,” Arrington said. “That’s her shop. I can’t tell her how to run her shop.”
Arrington, an attorney, said he does not believe Fulton County will be left on the hook for defendants’ legal fees.
“I think the law is unconstitutional,” he said. “Laws don’t apply retroactively, they apply going forward.”
