House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan has subpoenaed District Attorney Fani Willis of Fulton County, Georgia, demanding papers from her office in response to charges that Willis fired a whistleblower who attempted to stop a top campaign staffer from misusing federal funds.
The subpoena, obtained by NBC News, is part of a larger investigation by Jordan, R-Ohio, and House Republicans into whether Willis used federal funds to conduct her more-than-two-year investigation into former President Donald Trump, who was indicted in Fulton County last year on charges of attempting to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results. Donald Trump has pled not guilty.
Jordan claims in a letter dated Friday that Willis has failed to comply with two previous requests for records about her office’s use of federal grant money.
The subpoena requests that the district attorney’s office disclose records and correspondence “referring or relating to the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office’s receipt and use of federal funds” as well as “referring or relating to any allegations of the misuse of federal funds.”
Willis’ office has strongly opposed Jordan’s requests, stating in a letter to him last year that there is “no justification in the Constitution for Congress to interfere with a state criminal matter.”
Jordan’s request for documents comes after charges that the district attorney’s office retaliated against an employee who attempted to halt what she claimed was a top Willis campaign adviser misusing Justice Department grant funds.
According to a recording of the call obtained by the conservative Washington Free Beacon, a former district attorney’s office employee informed Willis that she was demoted after warning a Willis campaign aide about misusing federal grant funding earmarked for a youth gang prevention effort.
Two months later, the employee was “abruptly terminated” and “escorted out of her office by seven armed investigators,” according to Jordan’s letter, which quotes the report.
“Instead of using these federal grant funds for the intended purpose of helping at-risk youths, your office sought to use the grant funds to ‘get Macbooks … swag … [and] use it for travel,'” Jordan said in a statement. “Moreover, the whistleblower’s direct supervisor stated that these planned expenditures ‘were part of [your] vision.'”
“These allegations raise serious concerns about whether you were appropriately supervising the expenditure of federal grant funding allocated to your office and whether you took actions to conceal your office’s unlawful use of federal funds,” the deputy attorney general said.
In a statement, Willis termed the charges “false” and said they were part of “baseless litigation filed by a holdover employee from the prior administration who was terminated for cause.”
According to the statement, courts have found no merit in the allegations, and “we expect the same result in any pending litigation.”
“Any examination of the records of our grant programs will find that they are highly effective and conducted in cooperation with the Department of Justice and in compliance with all Department of Justice requirements,” the company said in a statement.
Willis is under more scrutiny for her prosecution of Trump in the Georgia election tampering case after a co-defendant claimed that she unfairly benefitted from the hire of an outside attorney who is said to be Willis’ love partner.