Georgia Senate revives panel investigating Fulton DA Fani Willis

Tamar Hallerman, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Jan 13, 2025

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ATLANTA — In a party-line vote Monday, the Georgia Senate revived a committee created to investigate Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

The 33-23 vote was among the first of the legislative session. It will allow the Special Committee on Investigations to continue its work weeks after a Fulton County judge ruled that the GOP-led chamber had the authority to subpoena the veteran prosecutor.

The panel has “uncovered a set of facts that require us to continue our work,” said Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, the bill’s lead sponsor and a member of the committee. “We are focused on the potential enactment of new laws on a statewide application or a change in appropriations, and in order to do that we need to continue the work of this and that’s what this resolution does.”

Democrats said the committee was politically motivated and targeted Willis because she charged Donald Trump and 18 of his allies for attempting to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s win in Georgia in 2020.

“This is a fixation on the past. But worse than that, it is driven primarily by the obsessions of one man who’s going to be president in a week,” said Sen. Josh McLaurin, D-Atlanta.

The Senate’s Republican leaders pushed for the formation of the committee a year ago after news emerged of Willis’ romantic relationship with an outside lawyer she hired as a special prosecutor in the Trump case.

The committee held a handful of hearings throughout 2024, which in addition to Willis’ conduct scrutinized how the DA’s office spent public funding and how Fulton County oversees those funds.

It all culminated in a pair of subpoenas the panel issued to Willis in August seeking a slew of documents and her testimony at a public hearing.

Willis declined hand over the requested information, and she skipped the hearing, instead asking a Fulton Superior Court judge to step in and kill the summons. Her legal team, led by former Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes, argued that the Special Committee did not have the authority to subpoena her and that the panel’s requests were overly broad and seeking privileged information.

In late December, Judge Shukura Ingram rejected Willis’ arguments, ruling that the committee did have the authority to subpoena her, but she gave the DA until Monday to explain why the summons should not be enforced.

Dolezal predicted that Willis would ultimately lose in court “and then we will have DA Willis testify before our committee.”

The action on the Senate floor was expected, but it was an unwelcome development for the DA’s office, which was removed from the election interference case in a blockbuster opinion from the Georgia Court of Appeals last month. Prosecutors have appealed the ruling to the state Supreme Court. If justices decline to hear the case or opt to uphold the lower court’s ruling, the case will be reassigned to another DA’s office, though many allies of Willis’ believe it would effectively die if kept out of her hands.

The Special Committee’s chairman said he’s considering legislation that would regulate the conduct of DAs around the state, not just Willis’, as well as the use of special grand juries and special prosecutors.

While the panel does not have the power to directly punish or reprimand Willis, it has kept the media spotlight on her as GOP leaders seek to embarrass her politically.

Sen. David Lucas, D-Macon, on Monday accused leaders of engaging in “bedroom politics” by zooming in on Willis for her romantic life. “What we’ve got to do is try to cross this out and work together on those things that we can to make it better for Georgians. This right here doesn’t make it any better — it makes it bitter.”

Sen. Harold Jones II of Augusta, the Senate’s new Democratic leader and a member of the Special Committee, called the investigation into Willis a “waste of time.”

“I’m a former prosecutor. We have no business trying to micromanage prosecutors’ offices,” he told reporters. “If Fulton County has an issue with what was taking place, they need to address that....That’s not the purview of the General Assembly. It never has been.”

Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell, said the Legislature needs to help the defendants who are “stuck in the middle” of the election interference case.

“They can’t move on with their lives and their very basic freedoms right now,” he said. “This is just and this is right. This committee is professional. They have followed the law, and isn’t it the job of the Georgia Senate to uphold those laws, make sure people are accountable.”

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Staff writers Adam Beam and Michelle Baruchman contributed to this article.