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Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis testified on Wednesday at a combative Georgia state senate committee about her prosecution of Donald Trump for election interference.
The state senate created the special committee in early 2024 to investigate Willis after the revelation that she had a romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, special prosecutor in the Trump case, which ultimately derailed the prosecution of the now-re-elected president.
Senators initially wanted to know if the two had improperly benefitted financially from the relationship. That inquiry expanded after Trump’s win in 2024, looking for signs that Willis had coordinated with the January 6 congressional committee while using federal grant money to do so.
“You want something to investigate as a legislature? Investigate how many times they’ve called me the N-word,” Willis said during her contentious testimony. “Why don’t you investigate them writing on my house? Why don’t you investigate the fact that my house has been swatted? If you want something to do with your time that makes sense. And you can use all this in your campaign ad – you attacked Fani Willis. What have you done, sir? Nothing.”
The committee has the power to amend Georgia law and create new legislation, but no power to sanction Willis directly.
“We know what happened in this case,” said state senator Greg Dolezal, vice-chairman of the special committee on investigations and a Republican candidate for Georgia’s lieutenant governor. “We laid out a timeline today of coordination with the J6 committee through Nathan Wade’s billing.”
Dolezal was referring to the House January 6 committee, which unanimously voted in 2022 to refer Trump and his lawyer John Eastman to the US Department of Justice for prosecution. Eastman was subsequently one of 19 people indicted in Fulton county in the election interference racketeering case.
In previous testimony before the committee, Wade said he said that he had been in Washington while the January 6 committee met, and records of his billing note that he had met with the committee.
Dolezal took note of Willis’s combative testimony, both during and after the hearing. “The DA wants to make this about everything other than the fact that they coordinated with the White House to bring lawfare against President Trump,” he said.
From Willis’s perspective, the committee’s questions were connected to the inquiries of the House judiciary committee and Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, who began an inquiry into Willis’s prosecution of Trump, questioning its political motivation and alleging misuse of federal funds.
Willis asked Dolezal mid-hearing: “Are you and Jim Jordan working together?” Dolezal said he had no contact with him.
Committees in the US House and Senate have demanded documents from Willis’s office, which she has either ignored or resisted to date, although the end of the election interference case may change her legal calculus.
Dolezal showed documents indicating that Wade had been paid from forfeiture money. Willis said her understanding was that he had been paid from professional services funds, but that she essentially “turned in a bill” to the county and let them sort it out.
Dolezal then asked why she hired outside counsel for the Trump case.
“Because we were drowning,” she replied. All her attorneys had major cases, with the prosecution of the murders of Kennedy Maxie and Secoriea Turner – two children – of the highest priority, she said. “It became obvious to me that I needed a lawyer that could manage this team,” she said.
Nine attorneys were working on the case at the peak, Willis said.
“But different people are needed for different things, and the people of Fulton County elected me to make those decisions,” she said.
At times, Dolezal cut off Willis’s microphone and tried to silence the objections of former governor Roy Barnes, who sat beside her as her counsel.
The White House has directed prosecutors to attack Trump’s perceived political enemies, with indictments attempted against Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, former FBI director James Comey and others this year. Dolezal said he has not spoken with federal officials about the state investigation, but “my guess is that they’re going to find this link to the January 6th commission relatively interesting and I think that they’re also going to probably look at the use of the grant funds”.
Willis said she would be undeterred by threats.
“I’m not Marjorie Taylor Greene,” Willis said. “I’m not going to quit in a month because someone threatened me.”
