Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was ordered to pay nearly $22,000 in legal fees to a conservative watchdog last week after a Georgia court found that she “flatly ignored” an open records request submitted by the organization.
The group, Judicial Watch, had submitted an Open Records Act (ORA) request to Fulton County in August 2023 seeking communications Willis had with special counsel Jack Smith and the House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol.
One day after the request was made, the Fulton County District Attorney’s office told Judicial Watch that it did not have any “responsive records.”
“This response 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 his Jan. 3 order.
The discovery of the document prompted Judicial Watch to file a lawsuit last March to force Willis to search for material related to the records request, but the embattled DA on four more occasions denied the existence of any communications with Smith or the House Jan. 6 committee.
Finally – just last month – Willis forked over an undated, two-page memo that she had provided to the House Jan. 6 panel – the same missive that Judicial Watch had already independently uncovered.
The district attorney denied the existence of any communications with Smith and argued that other documents related to the congressional probe of the Capitol riot “were exempt from disclosure.”
“Despite having previously informed Plaintiff four separate times that her team had carefully searched but found no responsive records, now there suddenly were — but they were not subject to disclosure under the ORA,” McBurney wrote.
“The ORA is not hortatory; it is mandatory. Non-compliance has consequences,” the judge ruled, noting that Willis’ records custodian admitted that “the District Attorney’s Office flatly ignored Plaintiff’s original ORA request, conducting no search and simply (and falsely) informing the County’s Open Records Custodian that no responsive records existed.”
“We know now that that is simply incorrect: once pressed by a Court order, Defendant managed to identify responsive records, but has categorized them as exempt. Even if the records prove to be just that — exempt from disclosure for sound public policy reasons — this late revelation is a patent violation of the ORA,” McBurney added. “And for none of this is there any justification, substantial or otherwise: no one searched until prodded by civil litigation.”
The judge ordered Willis to pay Judicial Watch $21,578 in attorney and legal fees for violating the open records law.
“Fani Willis flouted the law, and the court is right to slam her and require, at a minimum, the payment of nearly $22,000 to Judicial Watch,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “But in the end, Judicial Watch wants the full truth on what she was hiding – her office’s political collusion with the Pelosi January 6 committee to ‘get Trump.’”
The group has asked the court to appointment a special master to oversee Willis’ search for more records responsive to its request.
Willis was disqualified from continuing her sprawling racketeering case against Trump last month by Georgia Court of Appeals, which found a “significant appearance of impropriety” in her handling of the criminal prosecution of the 45th president.
A spokesperson for Willis did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
