DA Willis’ Office Potentially Engaged In ‘High-Risk’ Spending Practices: Report

Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis’ office was flagged recently for potentially “high-risk” expenditures, according to a new report that puts additional scrutiny on Fulton County’s top prosecutor.

Willis, whose office is spearheading the prosecution of former President Donald Trump’s purported endeavors to overturn the 2020 presidential election outcomes in Georgia, has come under closer examination from detractors. This additional attention intensified when she became embroiled in a potential ethics breach concerning her romantic involvement with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor she hired.

Wade subsequently resigned from the case after Judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing it, directed her to fire him or remove herself following a series of scandalous revelations.

Now, a report from the Fulton County Procurement Review conducted by the North Carolina-based accounting firm Cherry Bekaert and released on April 4 found that both the Fulton County sheriff’s office and the Fulton County district attorney’s office received a “high-risk level” rating regarding their procurement and spending practices, Newsweek reported.

The report, which explains that the review wasn’t an audit and was not looking for wrongdoing, said the review was aimed at providing “a sense of the county procurement system by interviewing key officials and a diverse sampling of departments/agencies based on suggestions of the Office of the County Auditor.”

The report further noted that Willis’ office exercised prosecutorial discretion in its purchasing decisions, highlighting a diminished level of accountability in the procurement practices of certain constitutional and elected offices. This lack of oversight heightens the risk of tarnishing the county’s reputation, the firm explained.

“We were informed that the use of prosecutorial discretion has sometimes moved past securing services such as expert witness testimony during the course of a trial, to items such as gun holsters for agents and office supplies and other items that likely could have been planned for and obtained through the Department of Purchasing,” the report reads.

The report noted further that some constitutional officers and additional elected officials have special or distinctive business needs that “if not handled or accommodated within County procurement policies/processes can lead them to seek alternative procurement methods without established procurement policies and procedures or oversight and lacking in transparency…This lack of accountability could damage the County’s reputation and erode public trust if perceived as mismanagement or inadequate oversight of public funds.”

Although the report identified the county’s overall procurement risk as low, it advises diminishing alternative procurement methods and enhancing oversight mechanisms to mitigate the potential for financial mismanagement or the misuse of funds, Newsweek noted.

The latest scrutiny comes on the heels of an update by a Republican House Republican leader last week who said he has been in touch with a whistleblower inside Willis’ office who says she is ready to reveal how the Fulton County DA district attorney allegedly abused federal funds in order to target Trump.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) joined Fox Business on Thursday, telling host Maria Bartiromo that a woman has come forward to shed light on the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into Willis’ handling of anti-gang funds and whether they were inappropriately redirected to support an allegedly politically motivated trial.

Jordan’s remarks came just one day after the Justice Department revealed “inconsistencies” in the Georgia prosecutor’s reports to the federal government regarding the allocation of their funds.

“God bless the whistleblower [who] came forward,” Jordan said of the now-former employee, according to Newsweek. “We’ve talked with the whistleblower, she’s giving information to the press, to us. Now the Department of Justice is looking into this. All kinds of problems with Fani Willis and this ridiculous investigation she’s run on President Trump and others.”