Embattled Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) fired an employee who warned her about mishandling federal funds, according to a report.
The Washington Free Beacon on Wednesday reported that in 2021, less than a year into her tenure, Willis met with an employee in her office named Amanda Timpson who told her that she had been demoted after attempting to stop a top Willis campaign aide from misusing federal grant money meant for a youth gang prevention initiative.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis appears for a hearing at the Fulton County Courthouse on November 21, 2023, in Atlanta, Georgia. (Dennis Byron-Pool/Getty Images)
Timpson told Willis that the aide, Michael Cuffee, who was also Tillis’s direct manager, had planned to use part of a $488,000 federal grant — which was earmarked for the creation of a Center of Youth Empowerment and Gang Prevention — to pay for “swag,” computers, and travel, according to the outlet, which also obtained an audio recording of the conversation.
Timpson reportedly told Willis in a November 19, 2021, meeting, “He wanted to do things with grants that were impossible, and I kept telling him, like, ‘We can’t do that.’”
She added, “He told everybody … ‘We’re going to get MacBooks, we’re going to get swag, we’re going to use it for travel.’ I said, ‘You cannot do that, it’s a very, very specific grant.’”
Willis reportedly responded, “I respect that is your assessment,” adding, “And I’m not saying that your assessment is wrong.” Willis apologized to Timpson, and said Cuffee had “failed” her administration, according to the report.
Yet, less than two months later, Willis “abruptly” fired Timpson and had her escorted out of the building by security, Timpson told the Free Beacon.
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Timpson filed a whistleblower complaint the next year alleging wrongful termination. Willis’s office issued a statement that called Timpson a “holdover from the prior administration” who was fired due to her “failure to meet the standards of the new administration.”
Timpson told the outlet that even though she told Cuffee that his plan to spend the earmarked funds on other things, Cuffee had claimed the purchases were part of Willis’s vision.
Cuffee denied those allegations to the Washington Free Beacon, saying that he was proposing to pull money from a different fund for the purchases. He accused Timpson of a “money grab.”
“This is just a money grab for Timpson,” Cuffee said. “She can do what she needs to do.” The outlet said Cuffee left Willis’s office the next month, in December 2021, for “personal” reasons.
However, Timpson had concerns about Willis even before the November 2021 meeting, according to the report.
Timpson, who was the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office as Director of Gang Prevention and Intervention, said in July 2021, she had discovered that several out-of-state students were participating in Willis’s Junior District Attorney program, a federally funded program for middle-schoolers from Atlanta and Fulton County public schools.
Timpson raised the issue with Willis on July 26, 2021, but said Willis did not want to hear about it.
Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade in Atlanta on September 6, 2023. (Jason Getz/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
“I wanted to make sure she knew because I didn’t want any scandal to be related to her. She immediately cut me off in the middle of my sentence and demoted me from the director of juvenile diversion to a file clerk,” Timpson said.
Timpson recorded her next conversation with Willis, when she warned about Cuffee’s alleged financial malfeasance.
“I knew it was me against the entire office,” she said. “If I didn’t get any hard evidence about what I was saying, everyone was just going to write me off.”
The Free Beacon confirmed the grant in question was not meant to be spent on computers or other items, and that the Fulton County Center of Youth Empowerment and Gang Prevention never opened.
Willis fired Timpson on January 14, 2022, and had her escorted out of the building.
“I am 4’11” on my best day,” Timpson told the outlet. “Who is so scared of me that you have to walk me out of the building by seven armed investigators? I’ve never had a warning about any negative behavior that would warrant someone feeling threatened by me.”
In August 2022, she filed a whistleblower complaint in Fulton County Superior Court, seeking damages for lost wages. The case is currently in discovery, according to the report.
County spending records show that after firing Timpson, Willis’s office in November 2022 used $1,245 of federal funds from the gang prevention grant to purchase items from Dell, the outlet reported.
According to other Fulton County records viewed by the Free Beacon, Willis dipped into federal grants to purchase computers and finance travel on other occasions.
In 2020, her office used $13,000 from a $2 million grant from the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative to help clear the Atlanta Police Department’s rape kit backlog to purchase computers and spent an additional $27,000 on airfare, hotels, and car rentals.
Willis’s office also reportedly purchased computers using grants from the Georgia Innocence Project, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Program, and federal funds appropriated under the Violence Against Women Act.
Timpson has filed a libel and defamation suit against Willis and plans to file a similar suit against the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office in the near future, the report said.
Timpson’s claims come as Willis is facing allegations that she hired her alleged lover, Nathan Wade, to work on the election-interference case involving former President Donald Trump and paid him a lavish salary despite him not having the requisite prosecutorial experience for the case. In addition, there are allegations and bank records that show that Wade, who filed for divorce the day after Willis hired him, took Willis on exotic vacations — raising the prospect that Georgia taxpayers paying for Wade’s salary are funding vacations for Willis, and also the prospect that Willis is personally benefiting from a case she is prosecuting, which could lead to her recusal from the case.
Timpson said her case and the allegations with Wade are very similar and demonstrate a pattern with Willis.
“My case and Nathan Wade’s case are very similar when you break them down point by point,” Timpson said. “Ethical violations, abuse of power, and the misuse of county, state, and federal funds.”
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