House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan issued a subpoena to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis over whistleblower allegations that her office misused federal grant money.
Summary
House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan issued a subpoena to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis over whistleblower allegations that her office misused federal grant money.
- The whistleblower allegations are the latest blow for the embattled prosecutor, who has come under scrutiny in recent weeks over separate claims that she profited from an improper relationship.
- Willis, a Democrat and the elected chief prosecutor of the county containing Atlanta, is leading the prosecution of former President Donald Trump and a dozen co-defendants on racketeering charges tied to their alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.
- The Washington Free Beacon broke the news on Wednesday that Willis fired an employee, Amanda Timpson, who tried to blow the whistle about the alleged misuse of $488,000 of federal grant money earmarked for a youth gang prevention program.
- Timpson claims that after telling Willis that her aide wanted to spend the grant money on “swag,” MacBooks, and travel, Willis told her “I’m not saying that your assessment is wrong.”
- Timpson also claims that Willis said her aide had “failed” her office, yet within two months it was Timpson, not the aide, who was fired and escorted from the building by armed security. Within months, Timpson filed a whistleblower complaint against the Fulton County DA’s Office.
- Jordan’s subpoena is entirely focused on the alleged misuse of federal funds, and does not mention either his committee’s prior efforts to gain access to all of the information relating to her prosecution of Trump and his co-defendants or to her alleged affair with a subordinate.
- A Trump co-defendant and the estranged wife of Willis’s lead prosecutor, Nathan Wade, have alleged that Willis and Wade have engaged in an improper romantic relationship. A January court filing did not include evidence of an affair, but did include evidence that Wade paid for luxury vacations for both himself and Willis.
- Trump’s co-defendant, Mike Roman, alleges that Willis benefited financially from her relationship with Wade, whose lack of prosecutorial experience or history of working on racketeering cases have raised questions about his qualifications – or why his legal expertise (or lack thereof) is worth paying him more than $653,000 in taxpayer money.
- CNN’s Zachary Cohen exclusively reported that Willis does not plan to step aside from the Georgia case despite allegations of inappropriate conduct. Willis is reportedly basing her decision “in part over concern that her departure would effectively end the case against Donald Trump and his multiple defendants.”
- The Washington Post profiled Mike Roman, the Trump co-defendant who has “landed a damaging blow to the racketeering case that Georgia prosecutors are pursuing against Trump and more than a dozen others” with his Jan. 8 legal filing that first brought forward allegations that Willis was profiting from an improper relationship with her subordinate.
- The Daily Beast interviewed the divorce attorney for Joycelyn Wade, the estranged wife of Nathan Wade, who denied theories that her subpoena request for Willis was coordinated with Roman. Andrea Hastings, the attorney, told The Daily Beast that they were “not connected with the other case” and they were just “seeking similar information about the same people but for different purposes.”
- The New York Post pointed out that “Willis and Wade have not denied having an affair” and noted that she is not “planning to directly address the affair accusations in her office’s court papers” in an expected legal filing due today to refute Roman’s conflict-of-interest allegations.
- Fox News quoted from the subpoena, which orders Willis to submit to the committee “all documents and communications referring or relating to the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office’s receipt and use of federal funds, including but not limited to, federal funds from the Department of Justice’s Office Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and Office of Community Oriented Policing Services,” because “to date, you have failed to comply voluntarily with any of our requests.”
- Breitbart reported that the US House investigation is not the only probe looking into Willis’ conduct. The Georgia Senate opened an inquiry on Friday that could result in public hearings that “could embarrass” the Democratic elected official.
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© Dominic Moore, 2023
