A former Fulton County District Attorney’s office employee is giving information to House Republicans as they investigate whether any federal funds were misused by the office, said House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
During a Thursday interview on Fox News, Mr. Jordan said that his office has “talked with the whistleblower” and “she’s giving information to the press, to us.” He was responding to a report from the Washington Free Beacon this week regarding the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) confirmation that District Attorney Fani Willis may have misused federal funding.
“Now the Department of Justice is looking into this. All kinds of problems with Fani Willis and this ridiculous investigation she’s run on President Trump and others,” he said.
Ms. Willis’s office is currently prosecuting former President Donald Trump and more than a dozen others in connection to allegations that they illegally conspired to overturn the 2020 election. The 45th president has pleaded not guilty to the charges, accusing her office of trying to interfere in the upcoming 2024 election, in which President Trump is the Republican nominee.
Ms. Willis has not yet publicly responded to those allegations in the Free Beacon’s report. The Epoch Times has contacted her office for comment.
Earlier this year, Mr. Jordan issued a subpoena weeks earlier to Ms. Willis to obtain documents related to possible misuse of federal funds related to her case against President Trump and more than a dozen other co-defendants. A letter issued to her office stated she is “required to produce the following items in your possession, custody, or control, from the period of September 1, 2020, to present in unredacted form.”
That letter made reference to a report that alleged a former employee in the Fulton County District Attorney’s office was demoted after she issued a warning to Ms. Willis about her alleged misuse of federal grant funding that was intended to be used for gang prevention efforts in Fulton County. Months later, according to the letter that cited the report, the employee was “abruptly terminated” and was “escorted out of her office by seven armed investigators.”
“Instead of using these federal grant funds for the intended purpose of helping at-risk youths, your office sought to use the grant funds to ‘get Macbooks … swag … [and] use it for travel,’” the letter said. “Moreover, the whistleblower’s direct supervisor stated that these planned expenditures ‘were part of [your] vision.’”
Previously, Ms. Willis said her office would provide information as requested in the House subpoena and criticized Mr. Jordan’s investigation, saying they “would require this government office to divert resources from our primary purpose of prosecuting crime.” She added that the subpoena would not stop the Trump case.
It comes as President Trump and other defendants had tried to get Ms. Willis and her office tossed off the case, saying her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade created a conflict of interest.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee in March found that there was not a conflict of interest that should force Ms. Willis off the case but said that the prosecution was “encumbered by an appearance of impropriety.” The judge then ruled that Ms. Willis could continue her prosecution if Mr. Wade left the case, and the special prosecutor resigned hours later.
Lawyers for President Trump and other defendants then asked Judge McAfee to allow them to appeal his ruling to the Georgia Court of Appeals, and he granted that request. They later filed an appeal in the case, while lawyers for the former president and the other co-defendants asked the appeals court to immediately review the matter in a filing submitted earlier this week.
In response, the district attorney’s office this week asked the appeals court not to consider President Trump’s motion “because the applicants have wholly failed to carry their burden of persuasion.”
“There is simply no trial court error to be found in the decision to deny disqualification,” Ms. Willis’s office wrote on Monday. “Days of evidence and testimony failed to disclose anything like a calculated pre-trial plan designed to prejudice the defendants or secure their convictions. The applicants have not identified any public statement injecting the District Attorney’s personal belief as to the defendants’ guilt or appealing to the public weighing of evidence.”
The Court of Appeals has 45 days to decide whether it will take up the matter. Judge McAfee has said he plans to continue to press on with the case in the meantime.
