The House Judiciary Committee warned Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Thursday that it would consider holding her in contempt of Congress should she not produce material the committee has requested related to her office’s use of federal funds.
Willis, who is leading the prosecution against former President Donald Trump in Georgia, has provided some of the documents but not all of them, committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) wrote in a letter to Willis obtained by the Washington Examiner.
Jordan subpoenaed Willis for the documents last month.
“We appreciate that you have produced a narrow set of documents in response to the subpoena, but your compliance with the subpoena to date is deficient,” Jordan wrote, adding that his committee would “consider taking further action, such as the invocation of contempt of Congress proceedings,” should she not fully comply with his request.
House Republicans have been probing Willis about her use of federal funds since last year, but in February, Jordan asked her to provide receipts and other records related to a $488,000 grant, citing an allegation from a whistleblower who said her office had misused the funds.
The whistleblower, Amanda Timpson, whose claim surfaced in the Washington Free Beacon, accused Willis of firing her after she raised concerns in 2021 that a Willis aide planned to use a portion of the grant for frivolous expenses.
“I said, ‘You cannot do that, it’s a very, very specific grant,’” Timpson said she told Willis of the aide at the time.
Timpson’s allegation came at the same time Trump and several other co-defendants in his case called on a judge to disqualify Willis from the prosecution because of an undisclosed relationship she had with a special prosecutor she hired to work on the case. The defendants said vacations Willis took with the special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, demonstrated she was financially benefiting from the lucrative wage Wade earned from working on the Trump case. Timpson indicated that her own experience with Willis supported what she said was the district attorney’s broader “pattern” of financial impropriety.
Willis has defended her actions and said she has no conflict of interest in the Trump case. She called House Republicans’ investigation of her an attempt to “harass” her and “meddle in” her prosecution of the former president, according to a letter she wrote to Jordan in February that was reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
In the letter, Willis dismissed Timpson as a former “holdover” employee who she said has filed numerous unsuccessful lawsuits with “similar assertions” since her termination, which Willis said was “for cause.”
“The House Committee on the Judiciary should not afford Ms. Timpson a forum to air erroneous claims merely because it seeks to continue its partisan efforts to target and interfere with this Office,” Willis wrote last month.
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She had indicated that her office would continue to provide the committee with the material specified in the subpoena related to the grant and other federal funds, but Jordan said his committee had yet to receive any additional materials since her February letter.
The chairman gave her a deadline of noon on March 28 to comply fully with his subpoena. Willis’s office did not respond to a request for comment.