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District Attorney Fani Willis is facing more pressure after the GOP-controlled state Senate opened an investigation into her office and her professional conduct this week.
The Fulton County top prosecutor was under scrutiny on Friday as a Georgia state Senate committee reconvened “to hear testimony about her hiring of Wade, a former special prosecutor in Donald Trump’s Georgia election interference case,” Newsweek reported, citing a local outlet, Atlanta News First.
The committee deliberated on the timeline of Willis and Wade’s relationship and the utilization of campaign funds, as reported by the outlet. It further stated that the committee plans to interrogate Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts and Chief Financial Officer Sharon Whitmore regarding their approval of Willis’ hiring of Wade.
Newsweek added:
Willis is prosecuting Trump and 18 others accused of trying to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. The Republican lost the state by roughly 12,000 votes.
But in the last few months, attention has turned away from Trump to Willis, who found herself embroiled in a scandal pertaining to a romantic relationship she had with Wade, a special prosecutor she hired in the case. It was argued that the relationship was improper and should disqualify Willis from continuing to lead the case. She was allowed to remain on the condition that Wade was removed and he resigned, but the decision to keep Willis on the case is being appealed.
Earlier this year, Republicans in the Georgia state Senate put together a special committee to “thoroughly investigate the allegations of misconduct” against Willis and her “potential conflicts of interest and misuse of public funds” while threatening to “enact new or amend existing laws” targeting the district attorney.
Bill Cowsert, a Republican member of the state Senate and the committee chairman, told Atlanta News First: “You lose the confidence of the public in the fairness of our criminal justice system if they think prosecutors are engaging in prosecution so their lovers can get rich. Our job’s not to go after any person but it is to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.”
Late last month, Willis’ office faced more accusations of misconduct from defense lawyers, this time in the case of the YSL trial involving rapper Young Thug.
Attorney Keith Adams, representing Young Thug, whose real name is Jeffery Williams, expressed concerns regarding alleged “misrepresentations” made by Assistant District Attorney Adriane Love regarding the admissibility of a 17-second video as evidence in the trial. The precise context of the video remained unclear.
Love serves as the lead prosecutor in the RICO case against Williams and 27 others. Willis unveiled the extensive indictment in May 2022, alleging that Williams is the kingpin of Young Slime Life (YSL), an Atlanta-based street gang associated with the Bloods.
During the trial, Adams stated that Love informed the judge that individuals in the background of the video were only heard saying “yeah, yeah, yeah.” However, Adams contended that those individuals in the video could actually be heard saying other phrases such as “I’m going to tell a lie on God” and “snitching b*****.”
“If she wins the motion, ultimately, she wins. But you don’t do it standing there, three feet from you, in your face, and lying to the court. And that’s what she did, she knew what she was doing and it’s not right,” Adams said regarding Love’s portrayal of the video.
Glanville acknowledged that Love’s information about the video was not entirely accurate, though, unlike Adams, he stopped short of accusing her of lying to the court.
“What you did tell me, Ms. Love, wasn’t the entirety of what was purportedly on [the video.] It did have other statements on it. It’s different if you had told me, ‘Judge, there’s statements on there. Probably need to listen for yourself.’ Not just ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’” he said in court, according to Newsweek.
In response, Love said she simply did not catch the other remarks made in the video.
