Georgia Court Orders Fani Willis to Pay More Than $20,000 in Records Dispute

A court in Georgia ordered Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to pay a legal group more than $21,000 in legal fees amid an open records lawsuit against the prosecutor. Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group, submitted an Open Records Act (ORA) request to Fulton County in August 2023 to obtain possible communications Willis’s office may have had with special counsel Jack Smith and a now-defunct House committee that was investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach. Willis brought criminal charges against President-elect Donald Trump and more than a dozen others for alleged criminal activity following the 2020 election. A response issued by Willis’s office to Judicial Watch “was perplexing and eventually suspicious to [Judicial Watch], given that Plaintiff subsequently uncovered through own effort at least one document that should have been in the District Attorney’s Office’s possession that was patently responsive to the request,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney wrote in an order this month, uploaded online by Judicial Watch on Jan. 7....