Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis would take the stand as a witness during a hearing in the case of the State of Georgia v. Donald Trump at the Fulton County Courthouse on Feb. 15 in Atlanta. Photo: Alyssa Pointer-Pool/Getty Images
A Fulton County judge is expected to rule in the coming weeks on whether a special state Senate investigations committee has the authority to compel Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to testify.
A debate over the subpoena powers of a Georgia legislative committee played out Tuesday during a three hour hearing before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Shukura Ingram.
In September, Willis refused to appear before the Senate Special Committee on Investigations that is conducting an inquiry into her alleged misconduct. Instead, her attorney asked a judge to block the subpoena pending a ruling whether state lawmakers can force her to appear before their committee.
The bipartisan committee was formed by GOP Senate leadership in connection with Willis taking on the investigation that led to racketeering charges against former President Donald Trump and 18 of his allies for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia and several other swing states.
Republican state lawmakers trained their sights on Willis after a February court hearing made public that Willis had been in a romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, the attorney she hired to lead the probe.
Willis attorney and ex-Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes argued Tuesday that under Georgia law, both the House and Senate must agree by joint resolution or by statute that ethics committees have subpoena powers.
“They did that by statute, the General Assembly knows how to grant subpoena power committees, as it’s done so in the past, and the General Assembly and the framers of the Georgia constitution know how to distinguish between the General Assembly as a whole and an individual chamber such as the House and the Senate,” he said.
Barnes said there are good reasons why one chamber doesn’t have authority to unilaterally issue subpoenas against another public official or governing body. Furthermore, he argued Tuesday that the committee was seeking an overly broad amount of documentation and was intending to ask intrusive questions that exceeded its scope of authority.
“What if the Senate decided they were going to form a committee to investigate the House,” Barnes said. “Call the speaker, let’s subpoena him. Why are you not calling Senate bills up? That is ridiculous. And it’s the reason that the power has been kept from individual houses, and has to be devised by statute.”
The Fulton County election interference case against Trump took another detour last month after a Georgia Court of Appeals canceled a hearing set for Thursday to consider a petition from Trump and co-defendants who want to disqualify Willis due to her prior romantic relationship with Wade. The future of the case was placed in doubt after Trump won the Nov. 5 presidential election over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
The special investigative committee will formally dissolve before the new legislative session begins in January. Its chairman, Sen. Bill Cowsert, a Republican from Athens, has suggested changes that would add new safeguards to what is now left to the discretion of state prosecutors when they appoint a special counsel.
Senate committee attorney Josh Belinfante said Tuesday that the Supreme Court of Georgia gives the Georgia Legislature broad powers to have its committees issue subpoenas. The committee is tasked with determining if there should be budgetary limitations on the hiring of special assistant district attorneys, he said.
“They’re not taking the position on whether the district’s attorney has done right or has done wrong, the Court of Appeals has that question,” Belinfante said. “The state Senate is entitled to investigate whether there is a need to reform practices, and it specifically identifies there’s state money that flows to district attorney’s offices.”
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