A Fulton County judge heard arguments Tuesday about District Attorney Fani Willis’s refusal to comply with subpoenas issued by the Georgia legislature, marking the latest instance of Willis fighting outside scrutiny of her prosecution of President-elect Donald Trump.
The hearing centered on a pair of subpoenas that a state Senate committee sent to Willis in August seeking her testimony and documents. Willis asked a judge to void them, arguing that the special committee, which was established this year to investigate Willis, did not have subpoena power.
Willis’s attorney, former Democratic Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes, told the judge the Senate committee needed to pass a bill in the full General Assembly to receive subpoena authority but that it neglected to do so.
“The operative word here is ‘General Assembly,’” Barnes said, adding, “not one house of the General Assembly. … Words mean what they mean.”
Lawyers for the committee countered that they passed a resolution in good faith that gave the committee investigative power and that nothing in the Georgia Constitution specified that the committee could not issue subpoenas.
The dispute between Willis and the state lawmakers has drawn significant attention in Georgia, both because it involves Willis’s high-profile racketeering case against Trump related to the 2020 election and because the argument raises a novel question about the state legislature’s powers.
Georgia attorney and political analyst Madeline Summerville told the Washington Examiner, “It’s a new question. It’s unprecedented.”
“The governor [Barnes] has an interesting argument,” Summerville said. “Does it have to be passed by both houses? And the issue of what senators can do on their own and by themselves is very interesting.”
She noted that the Republicans controlled the General Assembly and it would have been “relatively easy” to pass the bill granting their special committee subpoena power when they were in session earlier this year.
Phil Holloway, a longtime Georgia-based lawyer, called Willis’s argument “specious” and said Georgians were “downright concerned” with Willis’s use of public funds, which is the committee’s primary focus.
“It’s really more than people’s views on her criminal case against President Trump and the others,” Holloway told the Washington Examiner. “It’s really about how she is managing the office, how she’s spending taxpayer money, and how she’s exercising the powers of her office, almost seemingly without restraint or without any care as to the proper use of taxpayer money.”
Earlier this year, Willis dismissed the special committee as a “political quest” and said “people are angry” because she was “doing the right thing” after she brought an elaborate RICO indictment against Trump and 18 co-defendants alleging they unlawfully tried to overturn the 2020 election.
Willis’s case has, however, fallen into a bleak state. Trump’s election victory was expected to bring it to a screeching halt, but the case faced other, significant complications before that.
The Georgia Court of Appeals is weighing whether to disqualify Willis from the case after defendants uncovered an undisclosed romantic relationship between her and the lead special prosecutor she hired, Nathan Wade. Willis’s office paid Wade more than $650,000 for his work, far more than what a public prosecutor would have cost, according to public records.
Scrutiny of the district attorney has only grown. In addition to the special committee’s inquiries, the U.S. Congress has raised about her use of federal funds, which she has also challenged.
The hearing about the special committee’s subpoena came on a day when Willis made headlines because of two other, bruising court matters.
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Willis lost a case on Tuesday against the conservative group Judicial Watch after she refused to provide documents to the group related to her communications with special counsel Jack Smith. A judge said Tuesday that Willis did not provide a timely response to the court and demanded the district attorney hand over the records to Judicial Watch in the next five days.
Also on Tuesday, her other high-profile RICO case, against Grammy-winning rapper Young Thug and several co-defendants, came to an embarrassing close after more than two years of an expensive and convoluted prosecution. While some defendants had previously pleaded guilty and were penalized with mere probation sentences, the two remaining defendants were found not guilty by a jury on all charges except for a single minor firearm charge.
