Georgia lawmakers may consider legislation to increase oversight of district attorneys in the wake of allegations of impropriety against Fulton County DA Fani Willis.
Following a Georgia Senate hearing Friday that focused on Willis’ use of public funds, Sen. Bill Cowsert criticized Willis for spending money on prosecuting the sweeping election interference case instead of devoting more resources to reducing a backlog of criminal cases. He thinks county commissioners should have greater oversight of DA spending.
“We don’t know what she’s spends it for, because she doesn’t have to answer to (commissioners),” Cowsert, an Athens Republican, told reporters following a meeting of the Senate Special Committee on Investigations.
Appearing before the state Senate panel under subpoeana, county Commission Chairman Robb Pitts testified that the board has little power over Willis’ spending once it approves her budget. He said he would welcome the ability to review the spending of the district attorney and other elected officials, including the sheriff, tax commissioner and Superior Court clerk.
“After we appropriate money to them, I think we have an obligation, a fiduciary responsibility to the taxpaying citizens of the county, to know how that money’s being spent,” Pitts told reporters after the hearing.
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But Pitts spent much of the three-hour hearing dodging Cowsert’s invitations to criticize Willis, a fellow Democrat.
Earlier in the day, Willis blasted the suggestion that she or other DAs need additional oversight.
“Isn’t it interesting, when we’ve got a bunch of African American DAs, now we need daddy to tell us what to do,” Willis told reporters at a community event in Atlanta, WABE reported.
“They can look all they want,” Willis said. “The DA’s office has done everything according to the books. We are following the law.”
The hearing follows months of controversy over Willis’ decision to hire Nathan Wade as special prosecutor to oversee the election interference case against former President Donald Trump and 18 other defendants. Willis and Wade have acknowledged they became romantically involved several months after she hired him in 2021 and say their romance ended last summer.
Defendants sought to have Willis disqualified from prosecuting the election case, saying her relationship with Wade posed a conflict of interest. They said Wade spend thousands of dollars on travel with Willis, though the couple testified that they split their travel expenses roughly equally.
In March Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee ruled that Willis and Wade could not continue on the case together. Wade resigned from the case that same day.
The defendants have appealed McAfee’s decision, and the Georgia Court of Appeals must decide whether to accept the case by mid-May.
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The Wills-Wade relationship highlighted the limited oversight that county officials have over district attorneys, who are state officers that receive county funding. In March, the Fulton County Board of Ethics determined it did not have jurisdiction to hear complaints about Willis’ relationship with Wade.
Since then, the Board of Commissioners has approved policies that make the DA and other elected officials subject to county ethics rules. They are now prohibited from accepting gifts from people who do business with the county and must report all gifts valued at more than $100. Elected officials also are now prohibited from hiring anyone with whom they have a close personal relationship.
On Friday, Cowsert’s committee spent the day delving into the Fulton County Commission’s oversight of Willis’ office.
Although Pitts said he supported more oversight,he acknowledged other commissioners don’t agree with him. And Sen. Harold Jones, D-Augusta, portrayed the Senate inquiry as Republican revenge for prosecuting the election case.
“If Chairman Pitts had come in here without all that fanfare and said that he wanted that law changed and started talking about changing how sheriffs do business in South Georgia, talking about changing how district attorneys do business in South Georgia, they would have laughed him out of that room,” Jones said after the meeting.
“But now, all of a sudden, because they want to get back at Fani Willis, now all of a sudden they want to actually do that,” he said.
It’s unclear what additional oversight Cowsert’s committee might propose. But he said county commissioners should have greater say about how the money they appropriate for DAs is spent.
Told about Willis’ comments earlier in the day, Cowsert said he wasn’t surprised.
“I’m sure she doesn’t like criticism at all,” he said. “This is putting a public spotlight on her activities and her conduct. There are a lot of criticisms about that conduct.”
He said the panel would subpoena Willis if she did not voluntarily testify.
Following the hearing, Willis issued a statement in which she referenced news that a California man had been charged in federal court with threatening to injure her.
“On the same day Senator Bill Cowsert had the audacity to question whether an elected African American female District Attorney deserves protection from death threats, the United States Attorney and the FBI announced another indictment of someone who threatened my life,” she said.
While Cowsert asked questions about spending on Willis’ security, he did not say she did not deserve protection from threats.
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