Fani Willis, the controversial District Attorney of Fulton County, Georgia, has been ordered to pay $21,578 in attorney’s fees and litigation costs for failing to comply with Georgia’s Open Records Act (ORA). The decision by Judge Robert McBurney follows months of legal disputes initiated by Judicial Watch, a watchdog group seeking records of Willis’s communications with Special Counsel Jack Smith and the House January 6 Committee.
The controversy began in August 2023 when Judicial Watch submitted a request under Georgia’s ORA, which was met with conflicting responses from Willis’s office. Initially, the office claimed no such records existed. However, evidence uncovered by Judicial Watch suggested otherwise, leading the organization to file a lawsuit in March 2024. Court documents highlight a troubling pattern of evasion by Willis’s office.
After initially claiming no records existed, Fani Willis’s office repeatedly denied the existence of relevant documents, even after the lawsuit was filed. It wasn’t until a December 2, 2024, court order that the DA’s office conducted what was described as a “diligent search,” which unexpectedly uncovered records that Willis had previously claimed did not exist. These records were then deemed exempt from disclosure. In a memo submitted to Judicial Watch, Willis’s office provided a letter to the January 6 Committee as part of its compliance.
However, Judicial Watch had already identified this letter as a responsive record that had been improperly withheld. The memo, which was unsigned and undated, highlighted what the court described as a clear violation of the ORA. Judge McBurney’s order, issued on January 3, paints a harsh picture of Willis’s handling of the records request. The court noted that the DA’s office did not conduct any search for records until the lawsuit compelled action. Even then, the efforts to comply were insufficient, lacking a thorough review of emails or case files.
McBurney wrote in his ruling, “This response was perplexing and eventually suspicious to Plaintiff, 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.” Judicial Watch successfully demonstrated a violation of the ORA and a lack of substantial justification for that violation, the judge noted.
“The ORA is not hortatory; it is mandatory. Non-compliance has consequences,” McBurney continued. “One of them can be liability for the requesting party’s attorney’s fees and costs of litigation. To recover its relevant and reasonable fees and costs under the ORA, Plaintiff must do two things. First, it must show that Defendant violated the ORA. Second, Plaintiff must also demonstrate that Defendant lacked ‘substantial justification’ for the violation(s).”
The result: Willis was ordered to pay $19,360 in attorney’s fees and $2,218 in related litigation expenses, to be paid within two weeks. The court’s order also highlighted the troubling admission from the DA’s Records Custodian, who confessed under oath that no search for records had been conducted when Judicial Watch first submitted its request. Instead, the response was a curt denial, later revealed to be false. The ruling is the latest blow to Willis, whose high-profile role in cases related to the January 6 Capitol protests has already drawn scrutiny.
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