House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan subpoenaed Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis over documents detailing her office’s alleged misuse of federal grant funds.
The congressional writ comes amid reports that Willis fired a whistleblower less than two months after the employee warned the Georgia prosecutor about misconduct.
Former Fulton County DA Staffer Amanda Timpson complained in audio obtained by the Washington Free Beacon that Willis campaign aide Michael Cuffee planned to use some of the $488,000 federal money their office received for the creation of a Center of Youth Empowerment and Gang Prevention on “MacBooks,” “swag,” and “travel.” She said she warned Cuffee that the grants were “very, very specific,” but he said the abuse of funds was Willis’s “vision.”
“He wanted to do things with grants that were impossible, and I kept telling him, like, ‘We can’t do that,’” Timpson told Willis during a November 2021 meeting about Cuffee’s decision to demote her.
Willis told Timpson, “I respect that is your assessment” and “I’m not saying that your assessment is wrong,” but had the whistleblower escorted “out of her office by seven armed investigators” weeks after.
In a Feb. 2 letter accompanying the subpoena, Jordan confirmed that congressional oversight on Willis’ office’s use of taxpayer dollars “is particularly relevant in light of public whistleblower allegations that it has misused federal funding.
“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,” he wrote.
The House Judiciary Committee sent three letters in August, September, and December 2023 to Willis demanding documents outlining how her office spent federal funds. Willis openly flouted the committee’s request and accused Jordan of trying “to obstruct a Georgia criminal proceeding and to advance outrageous partisan misrepresentations.”
Jordan retorted by noting that Congress “has jurisdiction to conduct oversight of matters concerning DOJ grant programs and criminal justice to inform potential legislative reforms,” including grants district attorneys’ offices receive from the Department of Justice. He suggested the body may want to enact legislation to prevent such abuses in the future.
The House Judiciary Committee remains committed to uncovering Willis’ use of federal funds in her lawfare case against former President Donald Trump, but Jordan says the “recently disclosed whistleblower allegations” mean the committee is “prioritizing the production of documents concerning your office’s receipt and use of federal funds.”
The subpoena and accompanying letter also follow news that a bipartisan committee of Georgia legislators will investigate Willis’ allegedly inappropriate romantic relationship with private attorney Nathan Wade whom she contracted out as a special prosecutor on her “get Trump” case. Documents suggest Wade used $654,000 taxpayer-funded legal fees he earned on the case against the Republican frontrunner to fund “lavish vacations” for him and Willis.
