The More DA Fani Willis's Probe Into Fake Electors Ramps Up, the More the Georgia GOP Tries to Block Her

Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis is photographed in her Atlanta office on January 4, 2022. Willis is investigating whether Trump and others illegally tried to influence the 2020 election in Georgia.
Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis is photographed in her Atlanta office on January 4, 2022. Willis is investigating whether Trump and others illegally tried to influence the 2020 election in Georgia.
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Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s investigation into election inference in Georgia is picking up speed. A legal filing from the DA’s office showed that they are trying to obtain and execute a series of search warrants based on unnamed “sensitive information acquired during the investigation,” according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. There is no mention of who these search warrants are for or what information Wills’s office is seeking out.

Another filing showed Willis’s office is trying to disqualify a pair of attorneys, namely Holly A. Pierson and Kimberly Bourroughs Debrow,  who represent the 11 Republicans who falsely purported to be Georgia’s presidential electors. Specifically, the document states that if these attorneys are allowed to stay on the case, “there is a serious possibility of future ethical problems concerning the confidentiality of information obtained in the course of their representation thus far.”

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Pierson and Debrow said in a joint statement that any suggestion that they had violated their professional duties “is false and defamatory.” However, it is interesting to note that Pierson and Debrow filed motions to disqualify Willis from the entire investigation back in July because she held a fundraiser for Republican state Sen. Burt Jones’s Democratic opponent Charlie Bailey.

Wills expanded on her reasoning for the legal filings in an interview with Yahoo News.

From Yahoo News:

Defense lawyers “should be doing whatever is in the best interest” of their clients and “in the criminal law, sometimes that’s a plea, right? Sometimes I’m going to take this immunity agreement — and I’m going to get you the best deal,” Willis said in an interview with Yahoo News before her Monday filing to disqualify Pierson and Debrow.

She emphasized in the interview that she was not talking specifically about the two Georgia defense lawyers. But she added: “You cannot effectively represent — forget 11 — you cannot effectively represent two people doing that. That, to me, puts everything in jeopardy, and it’s a bad idea.”

This is interesting because Yahoo News also reported that the Georgia Republican Party is providing funds for the legal defense of most so-called fake electors. Willis claims this payment arrangement prevents her prosecutors from reaching plea agreements with lower-level participants to get to the top people involved.