Willis using Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission ruling to fundraise

(The Center Square) — Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is soliciting donations based on a superior court judge’s ruling that the Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission can proceed with its work.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Paige Reese Whitaker denied a request to prohibit the commission from moving forward while a lawsuit challenging its authority proceeds.

In an email with “kangaroo court” as its subject line, Willis said, “the other side will try every dirty trick in the book to get rid of me on Election Day 2024, from dark money to their kangaroo court for Georgia DA.”

“After I made history and was elected as the first woman DA of Fulton County in 2020, Georgia Republicans in Atlanta set up what they called the ‘Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission’ to ‘discipline and remove prosecutors’ and signed it into law in 2023,” Willis said in a fundraising email.

“Republicans didn’t like it when voters chose Democratic DAs who uphold the law, hold the powerful accountable like everyone else, have programs like our pre-indictment diversion to give first-time offenders a second chance, and promise – like I did – not to prosecute women for their personal healthcare choices,” Willis added. “So, they decided to use their trifecta control of our state government to set up a kangaroo court where they could drag us in and try to sanction us for doing our jobs.”

Georgia lawmakers created the Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission in 2023 with the passage of Senate Bill 92. Earlier this year, lawmakers passed SB 332, allowing the commission to adopt internal guidelines and rules and circumvent a state Supreme Court administrative order that found approving the commission’s standards of conduct was outside its authority.

Following the ruling, state Sens. John F. Kennedy, R-Macon, and Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, called on Stone Mountain Judicial Circuit District Attorney Sherry Boston, Towaliga Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jonathan Adams and Augusta Judicial Circuit District Attorney Jared Williams to drop their challenge.

“I guess a fundraising appeal complaining that courts of law might remove Fani Willis from the case for hiring her romantic partner wouldn’t attract many donations,” Georgia House Speaker Pro Tem Jan Jones, R-Milton, said in a statement to The Center Square. “The obstacles faced by her prosecution against President Trump and others were created by her own poor judgment, not a state law that holds prosecutors accountable to oaths they take.

“This fundraising appeal doubles down on her image that she’ll politicize anything.”