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ATLANTA — Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will finally testify to a special committee of the Georgia Senate after rebuffing their demands for more than a year, the committee’s leader said Friday.
After refusing to appear last year and fighting a committee subpoena in court, Willis will comply with a new subpoena to be issued by the Senate Special Committee on Investigations to appear on Nov. 13, said its chairman, Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens.
It will be an opportunity for Republican lawmakers to ask her about the election interference case she brought against President Donald Trump and his allies.
Cowsert said she agreed to testify to a limited scope of questioning that he could not disclose.
Willis’ office did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Republicans have been vilifying Willis ever since she pursued the case, but Cowsert said his committee members want neither to persecute nor humiliate her.
They just want her advice on legislation to regulate prosecutorial misconduct, he said.
Willis was dislodged from her Trump prosecution after the state Supreme Court declined in September to consider her appeal of a Georgia Court of Appeals order disqualifying her from prosecuting conspiracy charges against Trump and eight others.
The appeals court had found an appearance of impropriety in her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor she had assigned to the case.
Republicans have raised questions about her use of taxpayer dollars in hiring him.
“She can’t continue to create this impression that the laws don’t apply to her — that she’s being an obstructionist,” Cowsert said.
Sen. Harold Jones, II, D-Augusta, one of two Democrats on the eight-member committee, welcomed Willis’ testimony. It will be an opportunity to give her side of the story, said Jones, who is the Senate minority leader.
Despite her agreement to testify, the state Supreme Court will still hear oral arguments Nov. 4 in the dispute over the original subpoena, Cowsert said.
Cowsert’s committee also got an update from a new commission established by the General Assembly to investigate allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.
Investigators with the Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission have considered 36 complaints filed in 2024 and 86 so far this year. None merited promotion to a hearing panel, said Ian Heap, the commission executive director.
The details of cases are not public unless they merit formal charges, so Heap could not answer Cowsert’s question about whether the commission had considered allegations against Willis.
Cowsert said after the hearing that he merely wanted to know if her Nov. 13 testimony to his committee might be constrained by concerns about self-incrimination connected with any commission investigation.
Cowsert said Heap’s report on the escalation in the number of complaints — there were only seven in 2023 — was new information to him. He wondered whether it indicated many prosecutors were misbehaving and the public now has a vehicle to complain — or whether the complaints were merely frivolous.
Jones focused on Heap’s disclosure that all the complaints so far were deemed meritless and on the relevance of the law that created the commission.
“I think that kind of shows that the law was not needed,” he said.
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Dave Williams and Capitol Beat News Service
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