At a hearing on Friday, members of a Georgia Senate committee looking into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis examined the way in which Willis used public funds.
The special committee was holding its third hearing of the year, and witnesses Robb Pitts and Sharon Whitmore, both of Fulton County, spoke about Willis’s past requests for county funds.
While the meeting went on for more than four hours and was mostly uneventful, it did indicate that state lawmakers were committed to learning the specifics of how the district attorney’s office is funded while Willis is heading the prosecution of former President Donald Trump.
During the hearing, Willis said to a local media, “This is really messing up my business. They can look all they want. The DA’s office has done everything according to the books.”
After it was revealed last year that Willis had paid Nathan Wade, one of the special prosecutors handling the Trump investigation, a premium hourly fee totaling more than $650,000 in less than two years, she was scrutinized for her use of funds.
To make matters worse, one of Trump’s co-defendants discovered in January that Willis had dated Wade. This turned the case into a dramatic investigation into whether Willis’s connection with Wade had created a conflict of interest that required her to be removed from the case.
Wade resigned right away after a judge decided that Willis could fire Wade in order to address the conflict of interest issue. The ruling is being appealed by Trump and the other defendants.
Although the majority of Willis’s other work has been overshadowed by her affair with Wade, the district attorney has also come under fire—including from Congress—for a whistleblower accusation regarding her use of a $488,000 federal grant.
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According to a Washington Free Beacon article, Amanda Timpson, the whistleblower, claimed in January that Willis had fired her after Timpson had expressed concerns in 2021 about a Willis aide’s intention to utilize a portion of the money for extravagant costs.
The assertion is untrue, according to Willis’s office, and Timpson is an unhappy worker who was let go “for cause.”
State Senator Bill Cowsert, a Republican from Athens, peppered the committee with detailed questions at Friday’s session regarding how the committee might obtain records regarding Wade’s pay, the nature of his job, and the dates of it.
Cowsert also inquired about the several “enhancement requests,” or extra funding requests, that Willis had submitted while she was employed.
In response to a question concerning an enhancement request Willis made in 2023 for general trial expenses, Whitmore stated in his testimony that Willis requested a “lump sum, not specific with line item details.”
“I just want us to get a feeling for exactly how much oversight there is,” Cowsert retorted.
“It sounds like it’s very loose as far as employment practices and expenditures for independent contractors,” Cowsert said.
According to a Senate website, the special committee was authorized in January to look into claims of misconduct made against Willis pertaining to “potential conflicts of interest and misuse of public funds, to enact new or amend existing laws and/or change state appropriations to restore public confidence in the criminal justice system.”
