XPost: atl.general, sac.politics, talk.politics.guns
XPost: talk.politics.misc

ATLANTA (AP) — A judge has ordered Fulton County District Attorney Fani
Willis to pay more than $54,000 in attorneys’ fees and to turn over
documents after finding that her office violated Georgia’s Open Records
Act.

Attorney Ashleigh Merchant represents former Trump campaign staffer
Michael Roman, one of the 18 people indicted in August 2023 along with President Donald Trump on allegations that they illegally tried to
overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia. Merchant sued in January
2024, alleging that the district attorney’s office had failed to turn over public records she had requested.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Rachel Krause found that the failures
to comply with the records law “were intentional, not done in good faith,
and were substantially groundless and vexatious.” Because Willis and her
office “lacked substantial justification” for not complying, Merchant is entitled to attorneys’ fees and litigation expenses totaling just over
$54,000, Krause found.

Krause ordered Willis to search for and turn over all records responsive
to Merchant’s requests. The documents and payment are to be delivered
within 30 days of Friday’s order.

A spokesperson for Willis’ office said Monday that they plan to appeal the order.

Merchant said she filed the lawsuit as a last resort after Willis’ office repeatedly failed to produce documents.

“We definitely didn’t want to file suit,” she said. “They were just
ignoring it and telling us that documents didn’t exist that we knew
existed and resisting at every move, so we really didn’t have a choice.”


Willis’ office was “openly hostile” to Merchant and testimony showed that Merchant’s requests “were handled differently than other requests,” Krause wrote in her order. Open records officer Dexter Bond said during a hearing
that he refused to communicate by phone with Merchant, even though it was
his regular practice to call the requester if a request was unclear.

Treating Merchant’s requests this way “indicates a lack of good faith,”
Krause wrote.

Among the records Merchant sought were reports provided to Willis’ office
by companies hired “to track the impact of Willis’ statements to the media
and whether such statements were viewed favorably by the public,”
according to a court filing. The filing says Willis began contracting with those companies just before she and her office sought to indict Trump,
Roman and others.

Merchant also asked for a copy of the non-disclosure or confidentiality agreement that employees of the district attorney’s office are required to sign, as well as a list of attorneys Willis had hired.

The Georgia Court of Appeals in December ruled that Willis and her office
could not continue to prosecute the election interference case against
Trump and others. Willis in January asked the Georgia Supreme Court to
review and reverse that ruling, and the high court has not yet said
whether it will take up the case.

The intermediate appeals court’s ruling was based on an “appearance of impropriety” created by a romantic relationship Willis had with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom she had hired to lead the case. It was a
bombshell filing by Merchant in January 2024 that first exposed that relationship publicly, alleging that the relationship created a conflict
of interest that should disqualify Willis and her office from the case.

https://apnews.com/article/fani-willis-georgia-open-records-act-violation- 8b79847469f33d36f9c37f86940a238d

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)