Fani Willis’s Bodyguards ‘Soon Expected’ To Be Subpoenaed by Federal Prosecutors as Legal Peril Deepens for District Attorney

Word that body guards detailed to protect the district attorney of Fulton County, Fani Willis, are under federal investigation underscores how the aggressive Atlanta prosecutor — whose case against President Trump and his allies collapsed — now is in legal jeopardy.Those bodyguards, the New York Times reports, are soon expected to be subpoenaed by prosecutors as part of an investigation into the district attorney’s travel to the Bahamas in 2024. The probe is being led by the United States attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, Theodore Hertzberg. Ms. Willis won reelection in November of 2024, garnering some 70 percent of the vote.This is not the first time that Ms. Willis’s travel has drawn scrutiny. In 2022 and 2023 she took trips with her handpicked special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, to destinations like Napa Valley, Bermuda, and Belize. Mr. Wade was brought on to lead her sprawling criminal racketeering case against Mr. Trump and 18 others for allegedly interfering in the 2020 presidential election. Mr. Wade earned some $700,000 for his work on the case. The hiring of Mr. Wade, though, proved to be Ms. Willis’s undoing as the disclosure of their secret romantic relationship eventually led to her disqualification from the case. The two testified that Mr. Wade paid for their vacations together with his credit card, and that she reimbursed him with cash stored at her home, a practice that her father testified on the stand was a “black thing.” Ms. Willis called Mr. Wade’s credentials “impeccable,” even though he had never prosecuted a case before he was hired by Ms. Willis.Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade testified that their romance began only after he was hired to prosecute Mr. Trump. Cellular telephone records adduced by the defendants, though, showed thousands of text messages and phone calls between the two in advance of him joining the prosecution team. The Georgia Court of Appeals, which disqualified Ms. Willis, did not credit that account.The end of Ms. Willis’s tenure atop the case — and the prosecution’s collapse soon after when a second prosecutor declined to move forward with it — hardly ended the scrutiny directed at her by Republicans. A special subcommittee of the Georgia State Senate is devoted exclusively to probing her conduct. Ms. Willis fought a subpoena to testify before that tribunal, though courts eventually compelled her to appear. In that appearance in December she called Mr. Trump and his camarilla “criminals” and declared “I’m not Marjorie Taylor Greene. I ain’t gonna quit in a month because somebody threatened me.” She also declared that “I know you want to take me back to 1948, where an African American prosecutor can only prosecute certain types of people, but I prosecute and stand up for all victims that come into my circuit.”Ms. Willis also contesting a state law, signed by Governor Brian Kemp, that mandates that if a prosecutor is disqualified and the charges they brought dismissed, the prosecutor’s office — ultimately meaning taxpayers — are liable for attorneys’ fees. In this case that amounts to some $17 million, with $6 million owed to Mr. Trump. Ms. Willis argues that the law is unconstitutional.Judge McAfee ruled that Ms. Willis, on account of her disqualification, does not even have standing to challenge the law. The Georgia Court of Appeals, though — the same tribunal that barred her from the prosecution — will hear her petition after Judge McAfee allowed her to appeal his ruling. Ms. Willis said with respect to her appeal that “If you stay ready, you ain’t gotta get ready.’” Ms. Willis has also attracted attention from Washington D.C. Congressman Jim Jordan has long been investigating her, alleging misuse of federal funds. She has responded, in tart tones, that the intrusion of federal lawmakers into the affairs of a state prosecutor violates the Framers’ vision of federalism and is an encroachment on the Peach State’s prosecutorial prerogatives.An investigation by the DOJ, though, presents greater legal peril to Ms. Willis than legislative probing. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was asked last month at the Conservative Political Action Conference whether Ms. Willis — along with Manhattan’s district attorney, Alvin Bragg, would face “justice.” Mr. Blanche replied “Yes. When you talk about justice, we are working hard every day. And I don’t just say ‘working hard’ as a cliché.”

Fani Willis’s Bodyguards ‘Soon Expected’ To Be Subpoenaed by Federal Prosecutors as Legal Peril Deepens for District Attorney

Fani Willis’s Bodyguards ‘Soon Expected’ To Be Subpoenaed by Federal Prosecutors as Legal Peril Deepens for District Attorney

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