Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has been ordered by a Georgia judge to produce records related to her investigation into 2020 election interference. The records in question are tied to communications with Special Counsel Jack Smith and the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. The decision comes after a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative legal advocacy group, alleged noncompliance with the state’s open records law.
The ruling, issued by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, follows a legal dispute that began in March. Judicial Watch claimed that despite requesting relevant documents from Willis’s office, Fulton County denied the existence of any records responsive to their request. This prompted the nonprofit group to file a lawsuit under Georgia’s Open Records Act (ORA).
In his ruling, Judge McBurney determined that Willis’s office had failed to comply with the ORA by not responding adequately to the lawsuit or the initial records request. He found that the district attorney’s office did not mount a sufficient legal defense, instead arguing that they had not been properly served with the lawsuit.
“Plaintiff is thus entitled to judgment by default as if every item and paragraph of the complaint were supported by proper and sufficient evidence,” McBurney wrote in his decision. He added that the ruling establishes that Willis’s office violated the ORA by failing to either release the records or formally justify withholding them.
McBurney ordered Willis to produce any existing records within five business days and to cover the attorney’s fees incurred by Judicial Watch.
The lawsuit centers on potential communications between Willis and the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, particularly a December 2021 letter from Willis to then-committee Chairman Bennie Thompson. In that letter, Willis requested access to materials from the committee that could aid her investigation. Judicial Watch has argued that these records could be pertinent to understanding the scope of Willis’s probe into alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.
During a court hearing in January, attorneys representing Willis’s office stated that any relevant records from the House Select Committee had already been made public or had been provided in compliance with the records request. However, Judge McBurney’s ruling indicates that the response from the district attorney’s office was insufficient to satisfy legal transparency requirements.
The ruling marks another development in the high-profile investigation into election interference. Former President Donald Trump and several allies are facing scrutiny in Fulton County for their actions following the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s legal team has also sought access to communications between Willis and the House Select Committee, highlighting potential overlaps in the investigations.
This decision underscores the importance of transparency in legal proceedings involving public officials. It remains to be seen whether the records, once disclosed, will yield new information that impacts the ongoing election interference case.
