Fani Willis Refuses To Obey New Law and Pay Trump’s ‘Preposterous’ Legal Fees, Citing Bills for ‘Seafood Lunches,’ Luxury Hotels

The district attorney of Fulton County, Fani Willis, is contesting President Trump’s demand that the county she serves, Fulton, pay his legal bills — and those of his 18 co-defendants — in the criminal racketeering case she brought against them in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.The Georgia legislature passed a law a year ago that narrowly targets Ms. Willis and her constituents. The novel law mandates that a county must pay the legal fees of a defendant if the prosecutor who charged the defendant is disqualified and the case dismissed. Ms. Willis was disqualified by the Georgia courts after her love affair with her handpicked special prosecutor was exposed.The 47th president has gone to state trial court claiming some $6 million in fees, with the total amounting to $17 million. In a brief filed this week with the court, Ms. Willis calls that sum “suitably preposterous.” She insists that she “has no intention of allowing Fulton County taxpayers to pay such an absurd amount for such an absurd reason.” Ms. Willis accuses her erstwhile defendants of seeking an “enormous windfall.”Ms. Willis is challenging not only the reasonableness of the expenses racked up by her erstwhile defendants but also the constitutionality of the law in question, which was championed by Peach State Republicans and the state’s governor, Brian Kemp. Georgia, like many Southern states, has a legislature dominated by white Republicans and large cities controlled by black Democrats. Fulton County, where Ms. Willis was reelected handily despite the embarrassment over her romance, includes downtown Atlanta.Ms. Willis contends that the romance that led to her removal was not related to the merits of the case and that the law, which was passed in May, cannot be applied retroactively. The Trump legal expenses that Ms. Willis refuses to pay include, in her telling, hotel rooms that cost $1,000 a night — very high for Atlanta — “seafood lunches” that ran to hundreds of dollars, private security and aviation fuel, and expenses she claims are unrelated to the election interference case. She also argues that some of the expenses incurred by the defendants were covered by the Georgia Republican Party and Trump-affiliated PACS. Fulton County is potentially on the hook for millions of dollars because of the newGeorgia law, passed last year, that allows defendants to seek reimbursement Ms. Willis was disqualified by the Georgia Court of Appeals for her secret romance with her handpicked special prosecutor, Nathan Wade. The trial judge, Scott McAfee, found that their behavior emitted an “odor of mendacity” and was “legally improper.” Judge McAfee declined to disqualify Ms. Willis, though he did force Mr. Wade off the case. The Georgia Court of Appeals, though, determined that this was the “rare case in which disqualification is mandated and no other remedy will suffice to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings.” Both Judge McAfee and the appellate court found that Ms. Willis’s behavior emitted a “significant appearance of impropriety.”Ms. Willis, who won reelection in November in a rout, argues in her brief that the law she is contesting applies only after a finding of “actual impropriety” rather than a mere “appearance of impropriety.” She maintains that Fulton County ought not to be made to pay unless a “nexus” can be proven between the acts that led to disqualification and the dismissal of the charges. Ms. Willis’s disqualification was confirmed when the Georgia Supreme Court declined to hear her appeal. By law an independent prosecutor, Peter Skandalakis, was appointed to take over the prosecution and dismissed the charges. Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Steven Sadow, declared in a statement that her “misconduct during the investigation and prosecution of President Trump was egregious and she deserved nothing less than disqualification.” Ms. Willis’s office paid Mr. Wade some $700,000 despite his never having prosecuted a felony before. During his employment the two took vacations together to destinations like Aruba, Belize, and Napa Valley. Mr. Wade paid for those trips, and Ms. Willis testified under oath that she paid him back in cash stored at home. Her father testified that keeping cash at home was a “black thing.” Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis denied that their affair began before he was hired, but evidence adduced by the defendants indicated that the two exchanged thousands of text messages and phone calls before he joined the case. Mr. Wade visited Ms. Willis’s neighborhood 35 times before he was hired. Mr. Wade alleges that workplace affairs are “as American as apple pie.”

Fani Willis Refuses To Obey New Law and Pay Trump’s ‘Preposterous’ Legal Fees, Citing Bills for ‘Seafood Lunches,’ Luxury Hotels

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