In a strongly worded letter, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis retaliated against efforts by the congressional GOP to look into her office, pledging to bring the case against former President Donald Trump for election subversion and racketeering (RICO).
The dissenting letter is the most recent exchange of arguments concerning significant requests for document production between the district attorney and House Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
“Let me again state this clearly: nothing that you do will derail the efforts of my staff and I to bring the election interference prosecution to trial so that a jury of Fulton County citizens can determine the guilt or innocence of the defendants” Willis stated in a letter dated March 25.
The committee’s request for Willis’s office’s “receipt and use of federal grant funds issued by the U.S. Department of Justice” in August 2023 sparked the start of the conflict.
There were two further letters in September and December of last year, requesting essentially the same materials.
Jordan received several responses from Willis and Nathan Wade, the now-sacked chief prosecutor, who denied any wrongdoing and described the underlying claims as little more than a political witch hunt designed to impede her trial.
Jordan sent out a subpoena in February seeking records pertaining to claims that the district attorney’s office “has misused federal funding.”
In a response letter dated late February, Willis attempted to place the whole federal money controversy in the context of a lawsuit brought by a disgruntled former employee who had been “terminated for cause.”
The district attorney’s office started supplying about thirty documents in response to the subpoena at the same time. Willis added that her office would keep sending the committee any such pertinent documents on a continuous basis.
Jordan said in a second letter to Willis earlier this month that the district attorney’s office had “failed to produce” pertinent records in response to five different categories of requests.
Jordan gave Willis a deadline in the letter dated March 14: if the records are not provided to congressional investigators by March 28 at noon, “the Committee will consider taking further action, such as the invocation of contempt of Congress proceedings.”
Willis responded on Monday, dismissing the threat of contempt.
Willis stated in the letter, “I categorically reject the assertion that this office is deficient in responding to the Committee’s subpoena.”
More production in answer to some of Jordan’s recent “priority” demands was attached to the letter, along with an assurance that more papers will be sent to investigators “in the coming weeks.”
Willis also used the occasion to criticize Jordan for the reasons for his most recent grievances, portraying the threat of disdain as an entirely out of proportion response to the alleged shortcoming.
The most recent letter continues, that, “Your primary complaint appears to be that we did not complete the production of your extensive document demands (including five categories of documents over a four-year period) in less than two months. That demand is unreasonable and uncustomary and would require this government office to divert resources from our primary purpose of prosecuting crime.”
Willis restated her opinion that Jordan is merely making a flimsy attempt to divert attention away from the RICO case her office is working on.
“Let me be clear, while we are abiding by your subpoena in good faith and with due diligence, we will not divert resources that undermine our duty to the people of Fulton County to prosecute felonies committed in this jurisdiction,” the letter goes on. “We will not shut down this officeās efforts to prosecute crime ā including gang activity, acts of violence and public corruption ā to meet unreasonable deadlines in your politically motivated āinvestigationā of this office.”
Leave a Reply