Republicans are vowing to uncover alleged collision between Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office and the former January 6 House committee.
The GOP-led House Administration Committee’s oversight subcommittee announced Monday that Willis is being investigated by lawmakers probing the former panel and its findings.
“The subcommittee has opened an investigation into the extent of the coordination between Willis and the Select Committee and is committed to uncovering answers to these questions,” the subcommittee’s initial finding report states.
Since taking back the majority last year, House Republicans have ramped up their efforts to discredit the January 6 investigation into the Capitol riot. The committee was led by their Democratic colleagues in the last Congress.
The newly-released report challenges official accounts of the attack on the Capitol, and includes a renewed focus on Willis, who has become the subject of significant GOP criticism in the last two months.
Willis, who is leading the Fulton County election interference case against former President Donald Trump and his allies, is currently at risk of being disqualified from the prosecution because of misconduct claims stemming from her relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.
The defendants in the case argue that Willis should be removed because her decision to hire and pay Wade with county funds shows a conflict of interest. Willis and Wade maintain that their relationship did not begin until after his appointment.
Nonetheless, Willis is feeling the heat, not only drawing challengers to her reelection bid and being investigated by state legislators, but also facing additional scrutiny from Republicans like House committee chairman Barry Loudermilk.
Citing public reporting that said the former January 6 committee provided Willis and her team with “‘key evidence about what former President Trump and his top advisers knew with respect to Georgia’s 2020 election results,” Loudermilk’s panel suggested that Willis’ sweeping RICO case was a politically-motivated effort aided by the January 6 investigation.
Newsweek has contacted the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office for comment via email.
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan had previously accused Willis’ office of coordinating “its investigative actions with the partisan Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol” in a December letter.
Jordan had requested communications between the district attorney and the congressional committee as well as any documents that she had obtained from lawmakers.
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On Monday, Loudermilk claimed that some of the evidence that Willis obtained was never shared with his committee.
“The same video recordings that the Fulton County district attorney requested were never archived by the Select Committee,” Monday’s report said.
“Although no additional communications between the Select Committee and the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office were archived by the Select Committee, the prospect of the Select Committee sharing video recordings of witness interviews with Willis but not this subcommittee remains particularly concerning.”
The report also said it had information that discredited former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony. Hutchinson was a star witness who revealed damning details about Trump and his top allies both publicly and privately to the January 6 committee. In Monday’s report, the oversight subcommittee said her account was not corroborated by four other White House employees.
“The Select Committee, despite knowing that Hutchinson’s testimony changed substantially over time to be more dramatic, rushed into yet another Hollywood hearing even though they were not able to verify the story,” the report states.
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