Fani Willis sub­poe­na defi­ance test­ed in Geor­gia court

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.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

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.