May 16, 2024 – Senators Grassley and Johnson are investigating Fani Willis over alleged abuse of federal funds

In Email/Dossier/Govt Corruption Investigations, Featured Timeline Entries by Katie Weddington

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis appears in court on Nov. 21, 2023, in Atlanta. (Credit: Dennis Byron/Politico)

Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson are investigating whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office misused federal funds.

The two Republican senators highlighted multiple reports accusing Willis’ office of squandering funds, including from the Justice Department Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and other initiatives, on frivolous items such as “swag” and unrelated travel.

“In Fiscal Year (FY) 2020, OJJDP awarded Fulton County nearly $500,000 to establish the Fulton County Center of Youth Empowerment and Gang Prevention,” Grassley (R-Iowa) and Johnson (R-Wis.) wrote in a letter to Willis Wednesday.

“The Center has yet to open and the ‘building meant to house it is closed to the public, its gates padlocked.’”

They cited Washington Free Beacon reporting on Willis, a Democrat, firing Amanda Timpson, previously the head of gang prevention and intervention at the DA office.

She was the one who sounded the alarm about the potential misuse of OJJDP funds.

(…) “The apparent and significant discrepancy between the purpose of the federal award of taxpayer money and the actual use of that money raises alarms that it hasn’t been used as Congress intended,” they wrote.

The two senators are demanding a list of grants the Fulton County DA’s office garnered since fiscal year 2019. Willis ascended to the district attorney perch in 2021.

They also want a list of expenditures and planned expenditures for each grant.

Willis was given a deadline of May 29 to comply with that request.

(Read more: New York Post, 5/16/2024)  (Archive)