During a Friday hearing, officials revealed that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis concealed her investigation into former President Donald Trump in her budget request, which was intended to address a backlog of cases. In the Georgia election interference case, a co-defendant of Trump accused Willis of appointing her former lover Nathan Wade as a special prosecutor without approval from the Fulton County Board of Commissioners.
It was also alleged that she used funds allocated for clearing the backlog of cases from the COVID-19 pandemic to pay him. Chairman Robb Pitts and county Chief Financial Officer Sharon Whitmore confirmed during the hearing that Willis never disclosed her intention to utilize the funds for probing Trump. The Fulton County government initiated the COVID-19 Case Resolution Project in December 2021 to address the accumulation of over 140,000 open and active cases resulting from the pandemic. The project received $75 million in funding from the National Association of Counties.
“So she hadn’t really told you how she spent the money?” Georgia Senate Majority Leader Bill Cowsert asked later, to which Pitts responded “no sir.”
Pitts made it clear that the allocated budget covered the entire justice system, not solely for Willis. Furthermore, he confirmed that his board indeed disbursed a substantial amount of money to the district attorney in order to address the backlog of criminal prosecutions.
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“And when you did that, there was no mention of any election integrity case, was there?” Cowsert asked.
“I believe that’s correct,” Pitts responded.
Whitmore then said that any election integrity case “for additional resources … would have come through as an enhancement request.”
“So, as a commission, you weren’t aware that you were funding an election interference case, certainly not before 2023, which would have been three years after the election?” Cowsert continued.
“I think that’s correct,” Pitts answered.
