Fani Willis, the Fulton County District Attorney prosecuting former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election subversion case, fired an employee who warned her about misusing federal funds, according to a new leaked audio tape.
Willis is facing fresh allegations of abdicating her responsibilities after a newly surfaced audio recording revealed a whistleblower privately warned in November 2021 that her top campaign aide was attempting to misuse federal funds, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
During the conversation, then-employee Amanda Timpson told Willis that campaign aide Michael Cuffee intended to use part of a $488,000 federal grant, which was intended to counter local gang activity, to pay for unrelated matters such as computers and travel expenses.
“He wanted to do things with grants that were impossible, and I kept telling him, like, ‘We can’t do that,’” Timpson told Willis in a Nov. 19, 2021, meeting. “He told everybody … ‘We’re going to get MacBooks, we’re going to get swag, we’re going to use it for travel.’ I said, ‘You cannot do that. It’s a very, very specific grant.’”
“I respect that is your assessment,” Willis responded. “And I’m not saying that your assessment is wrong.”
Willis later apologized to Timpson during their discussion, admitting that Cuffee “failed” her administration. But just 56 days later, the district attorney fired Timpson and had her escorted out of her office by seven armed investigators, Timpson told the Free Beacon.
When Timpson filed a whistleblower complaint in 2022 alleging wrongful termination, Willis issued a statement saying Timpson was a “holdover from the prior administration” who was fired because of her “failure to meet the standards of the new administration.”
Revelations of the whistleblower’s account come as the Democratic district attorney has come under scrutiny over allegations that she engaged in an “improper, clandestine” romantic relationship with a local Atlanta attorney, Nathan Wade, whom she hired to serve as special prosecutor in the Trump racketeering indictment.
Such allegations were first revealed earlier this month when Trump’s co-defendant, opposition researcher Mike Roman, filed a complaint alleging that Wade paid for Willis to go on vacations with him. Credit card statements revealed in Wade’s divorce case confirmed he paid for at least two plane tickets in Willis’s name and purchased a cruise line vacation around the same time.
Roman’s attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, filed a civil lawsuit on Tuesday accusing Willis of withholding information that could prove allegations of the improper relationship between her and Wade.
Willis and Wade have been subpoenaed to testify at a Feb. 15 hearing involving motions to disqualify the election interference case, according to the lawsuit, though the pair could seek to quash the subpoenas.
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Willis’s office released a statement last week arguing that the defendant is implying “this office has failed to meet its obligation under Georgia’s Open Records Act – respectfully, we disagree with your disingenuous implication.”
The district attorney is expected to respond to Roman’s complaint, which seeks to remove her from the case and dismiss the indictment, in a court filing by Friday.