Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis coordinated extensively with the Biden Justice Department and White House as well as Democrats on the House Jan. 6 investigative committee as she built a failed criminal case against President Donald Trump and his allies related to their challenge to Georgia’s 2020 election results, according to a trove of internal communications obtained by Just the News.The memos show that President Joe Biden’s top White House lawyer personally opened the door for Willis’ prosecutors to interview Trump administration officials by waiving claims of executive privilege, that federal prosecutors waived certain rights to allow the interviews to proceed before a state grand jury and that Willis’s team spoke glowingly of the congressional efforts to expose Trump’s involvement in the disputed election.
“Our initial review of the report confirms you all have accomplished amazing things in the past year,” F. Donald Wakeford, a top deputy to Willis, wrote in a December 2022 email to Tim Heaphy, chief investigative counsel for the Democrat-run Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Just the News, alongside the nonprofit public interest law firm America First Legal (AFL), sued Willis for the records, under Georgia’s Open Records Law. Willis, a longtime Trump nemesis, sought to hide many of the records with claims of legal privilege during a prolonged legal fight.
In a reaction to the lawsuit, Willis’ office this week dropped all privilege claims and released all the documents without any redactions, providing to Just the News — and the public — more information than it did to congressional Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee.
“These documents reveal that the Biden Administration and the January 6 Committee were much more involved in District Attorney Fani Willis’s prosecution of President Trump than was previously believed. AFL was happy to represent Just the News to get Americans this new information,” said Will Scolinos, an attorney at America First Legal.
A cozy relationship, and a big gift from the Biden White House
The documents show a cozy relationship between the Biden administration and Willis’ staff, one that included a meeting between her outside special prosecutor Nathan Wade and the Biden White House.
Wade, who admitted to a “personal relationship” with Willis outside the office, billed Fulton County $2,000 for an “interview with DC/White House” on Nov. 18, 2022, just as Willis’ probe was accelerating, according to the new records Willis was forced to disclose.
There is no further explanation in the documents for that interaction, and Fulton County told Just the News and its lawyers at AFL that Wade did not keep any records of what happened at that meeting. Calls to Willis for comment were not returned by publication time.
The new memos show that the Biden White House counsel’s office gave Willis’ prosecution team a major gift, waiving Trump’s ability to claim executive privilege and to block former administration officials from testifying.
Executive privilege is the implied authority of the U.S. president to withhold information that the executive branch possesses from Congress or the Judiciary on the grounds that a president is entitled to confidential advice before making decisions. It is a long-standing American tradition and the secrecy of presidential communications was first referenced by Chief Justice John Marshall in the landmark case Marbury v. Madison.
Ironically, President Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder asserted the same privilege during investigations of the botched “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scheme. The Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press noted that “When a president invokes executive privilege, it may be among the most difficult walls to penetrate because the number of potential leakers with access to White House documents is limited and closely monitored.” In some instances, reporting has simply been prevented from reporting on an important issue because the blockade worked.
Biden, however, believed that the “extraordinary events” surrounding the “insurrection” on Jan. 6 in the U.S. Capitol, warranted waiving this historical understanding of the privacy of presidential communications, the new memos show.
In a letter to Fulton County prosecutors in September 2022, Biden’s Special Counsel, Richard Sauber, informed Willis’ deputy, Wakeford, that the White House would not invoke executive privilege for the testimony of former Trump White House officials before the Georgia grand jury.
“These events threatened not only the safety of Congress and others present at the Capitol, but also the principles of democracy enshrined in our history and our Constitution,” Sauber wrote.
“In light of these unique circumstances, President Biden has determined, as he did with respect to the Congressional investigation of these events, that an assertion of executive privilege is not in the public interest with respect to efforts to thwart the orderly transition of power under our Constitution,” the special counsel added.
This waiver would apply to any events in the White House on or about Jan. 6, Justice Department efforts to investigate allegations of fraud in the 2020 election, and any effort to “alter valid 2020 election results or obstruct the transfer of power,” Sauber explained.
You can read the Biden White House letter below:
It has been known for years that Biden waived Trump’s executive privilege for the congressional inquiry and the federal prosecution of Trump led by Special Counsel Jack Smith, but the Georgia memo appears to be the first document to show how Biden extended that waiver in coordination with a prosecution at the state level.
Willis made Georgia first state to indict Trump over Jan. 6
Willis announced in August 2023 that she had indicted Trump and allies on racketeering, conspiracy and other charges after a more than two-years-long investigation into alleged 2020 election interference in that state. Under Willis, Georgia became the first state to do so, followed later by fellow Democrat prosecutors in Arizona and Wisconsin who also went after Trump allies.
Eighteen other people, including Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, were also indicted in Georgia, accused of aiding Trump in a bid to change the outcome of the state’s 2020 election. You can read that indictment here.
