Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis suggested she will not testify before the Georgia Senate committee investigating her after the panel threatened to subpoena her, prompting Georgia’s lieutenant governor to respond.
During a news conference earlier this week, Ms. Willis was asked whether she'll testify before the committee. The district attorney became a national figure after she initiated her case against former President Donald Trump, accusing him and more than a dozen others of participating in a scheme to illegally overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the county.
“First of all, I don’t think they even have the authority to subpoena me, but they need to learn the law,” Ms. Willis said.
When asked a separate question about whether she would testify, Ms. Willis suggested that she would not comply. She then criticized the Republican-led panel as being “unlawful.”
“I will not appear to anything that is unlawful, and I have not broken the law,” she said. “I’ve said it amongst these leaders, I’m sorry folks get [angry] that everybody gets treated equally.”
The district attorney, a Democrat, also did not comment on a recent ABC News interview that featured former special prosecutor Nathan Wade, who resigned amid allegations that he was involved in a relationship with Ms. Willis and that she benefitted financially from it. However, she was critical of the Senate’s investigation into whether there was misconduct in her relationship with Mr. Wade, who was also involved in the Trump case before he stepped down in March under a judge’s order.
The Senate committee chairman, Republican state Sen. Bill Cowsert, told a local Fox station in an interview that his committee has the power to make her testify, adding that she could be held in contempt if she doesn’t cooperate.
“This is what treating everybody evenly looks like, even if DA Willis doesn’t like being held accountable,” he said.
In a statement issued by the Senate special committee, it is looking to “thoroughly investigate” allegations of misconduct against Ms. Willis that relate “to potential conflicts of interest and misuse of public funds” and whether it should “enact new or amend existing laws and/or change state appropriations to restore public confidence in the criminal justice system.”
It comes as Georgia’s appeals court on May 8 agreed to take up an appeal filed by President Trump’s lawyers, who are seeking to disqualify Ms. Willis over allegations surrounding her relationship with Mr. Wade. In March, Judge Scott McAfee ruled that Ms. Willis could stay on the Trump case if Mr. Wade leaves, although he wrote that an “odor of mendacity” remains.
The appeal seems likely to delay the case. It’s the second time in as many days that the former president has gotten a favorable ruling that could push any future trials beyond the November presidential election, in which he is expected to be the Republican nominee. A day earlier, the judge in his Florida classified documents case indefinitely postponed that trial date.
President Trump’s lead attorney in Georgia, Steve Sadow, said that the former president looks forward to presenting arguments to the appeals court as to why the case should be dismissed and why Ms. Willis “should be disqualified for her misconduct in this unjustified, unwarranted political persecution.”
The allegations against Ms. Willis first surfaced in a motion filed in early January by Ashleigh Merchant, a lawyer for former Trump campaign staffer and onetime White House aide Michael Roman. The motion alleged that Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade were involved in an inappropriate romantic relationship and that she paid him large sums for his work and then benefitted when he paid for lavish vacations.
They confirmed the relationship but denied that they financially benefitted from the arrangement. Both also denied claims that they were in a relationship earlier than what at least one witness claimed during a televised February court hearing on her disqualification.
The two said that their relationship did not start until spring 2022, or several months after Mr. Wade was hired in the Trump case. Their romance, they claimed, ended in the summer of 2023.
The pair testified that they split travel costs roughly evenly, with Ms. Willis often paying expenses or reimbursing Mr. Wade in cash. Neither of them provided any financial records or statements to back up that claim.
The Epoch Times contacted Ms. Willis’s office for comment but didn’t receive a reply by press time.
