According to court filings, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has been forced to pay more than $54,000 in legal expenses for breaking Georgia’s Open Records Act.
The conflict started when defense lawyer Ashleigh Merchant, who works for Michael Roman, a former campaign and White House advisor to President Donald Trump, asked Willis’ office to produce certain documents. According to Newsweek, Roman and Trump were charged in the Georgia election tampering case, which Willis filed in 2023 and is still pending.
The site added that Friday’s decision is just another blow to Fani Willis’s lawsuit against Trump and the other defendants.
The case against Trump and 18 other co-defendants, who are charged with plotting to thwart Joe Biden’s 2020 Georgia victory, was dismissed from Willis’ prosecution in December. Trump has refuted the allegations and charged Willis with carrying out an attack with political motivations.
Due to the “appearance of impropriety” resulting from Willis’ prior contact with Nathan Wade, a former special prosecutor on the case, the Georgia Court of Appeals determined that disqualification was required. In October, Wade was compelled to step down.
The court disqualified her “based solely upon an appearance of impropriety and absent a finding of an actual conflict of interest or forensic misconduct,” according to Willis’ January appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court.
The judge concluded in the Friday court decision that Merchant’s requests for documents had been “handled differently than other requests” and that the DA’s office had been “openly hostile” to them. This, the judge continued, showed a “lack of good faith.”
According to the court order, Willis now has 30 days to give Merchant all the data that have been requested and pay him $54,264, which represents about 80 hours of labor on the case, Newsweek added.
Merchant had previously claimed that Willis’ office had concealed important records pertaining to Nathan Wade’s job. She also asked for documents outlining the distribution of public cash by Willis’ office.
Separately, in early March, the Georgia Senate approved a law that would permit Trump and his co-defendants to request compensation for their legal costs.
According to Newsweek, the overwhelmingly approved legislation allows counties to pay for legal fees and other expenses when a district attorney is disqualified for misconduct, as long as the case is dismissed.
Attorney Merchant wrote on X in response to the court ruling on Friday: “I’m proud that judges are willing to hold those in authority accountable when they disregard the law!!!”
“No Georgia court has ever disqualified a district attorney for the mere appearance of impropriety without the existence of an actual conflict of interest,” Willis wrote in her January appeal.
In December, Willis was taken out of the case against Trump by the appeals court.
According to the verdict, as Fox News reported, Willis and the assistant DAs in her office now have “no authority to proceed,” but the court did not go so far as to completely dismiss Trump’s indictment.
It is the most recent in Willis’s run of unfavorable legal news. In a case involving an open records litigation, a Georgia judge decided against her in September.
Judge Rachel Krause of Fulton County granted a move that exempts Willis from being named in the complaint directly, enabling her to continue serving in her official role as district attorney, but she denied a plea to dismiss a lawsuit pertaining to open records directed at Willis and her office.
The action, which involved Merchant, was the result of an investigation into election manipulation in Fulton County.
According to Merchant, Willis was hiding documents pertaining to a media monitoring company that was purportedly supported by public funds.
