Fulton County DA Fani Willis is calling for a funding boost from the county after she spent over three-quarters of a million dollars on the salary of a subordinate she slept with.
At a news conference Monday morning, Willis accused Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts along with the rest of the Board of Commissioners of not "doing their job" allocating the budget better.
Willis insisted that in order to adequately perform her duties, she needs more money to hire additional staff.
"If the District Attorney's Office doesn't have the right amount of attorneys, investigators—we can't continue to excel and to make progress for our city," Willis said. "We can't continue to enjoy a safe city."
Willis is urging Fulton County citizens to call their commissioners while the board is finalizing the 2025 budget.
"We ought to demand that the DA's office is financed in a way where we can properly prosecute crimes," Willis said.
Ahead of the budget deadline, Willis also blamed the board for the county's decrepit jailhouse conditions. "The jail is falling apart. The jail is disgusting," Willis said. She noted that some prisoners are using pieces of the crumbling county jail to make shanks and attack other inmates. Federal officials recently confirmed that prisoners are making makeshift weapons, such as shivs, out of the jail fixtures.
A two-year federal investigation into the Fulton County Jail, also referred to as "Rice Street," found the facility's horrific housing conditions "inhumane, violent, and hazardous" to the point of being "unconstitutional," in part violating the Eighth Amendment, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment.
According to the 97-page U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) report, since 2022, at least six inmates died due to violence, and in 2023 alone, 313 stabbings occurred involving contraband and improvised weapons. One inmate, who was detained in a bedbug-infested cell inside the jail's psychiatric wing, died of severe neglect. Investigators discovered his body covered in insects like lice. Cockroaches and rodents currently roam the lock-up's floors.
Last year, Fulton County Jail workers walked off the job because they were owed over $1.4 million in unpaid wages. The sheriff called the incident "a budgetary issue," and the CEO of the security company that supplied the jail's workforce said they were repeatedly told "The check is in the mail" until a wire transfer was placed months later.
"You have one man manning 50 and 60 inmates," Willis remarked Monday. "That cannot happen and people be safe. At some point, we have to put blame where blame lies. Where it lies is with Chairman Robb Pitts and those six commissioners that sit with him. They have a duty, and they need to issue a budget for our sheriff and the district attorney's office that does the job."
A spokesperson for Fulton County said in a statement that the board "must carefully weigh budgetary requests" against "the tax burdens of Fulton County property owners." Such spending, including on further staffing the DA's office, would total $134.3 million and require a nearly 20 percent property tax increase to cover the costs, a county spokesperson told 11Alive.
As for Willis, the Democrat DA's funding request comes after she blew hundreds of thousands of tax dollars on the wages of an underqualified attorney she had appointed to a supervisory position.
Willis is accused of engaging in a self-enrichment scheme with her lover, Nathan Wade, whom she had hired to serve as special counsel in charge of prosecuting President-elect Donald Trump on Georgia RICO charges. Wade, a private practice lawyer who specializes primarily in personal injury and family law, has little prosecutorial experience. Nevertheless, Willis awarded Wade a high-paying contract that has brought him home hefty paychecks outmatching his more qualified colleagues, who were paid far less.
For his work on the Trump case, Wade made more than $770,000 in taxpayer funds taken from the county's coffers. Wade then wooed Willis with luxury trips around the world, including cruises in the Caribbean and Napa Valley wine tastings.
Under oath, Willis insisted they either split their travel expenses, though there's scant proof of these transactions, or she paid him back with cold, hard cash—hence why the purported payments aren't traceable.
Wade told Congress he has no relevant experience for the special prosecutor position and even had to attend training to gain knowledge about legal matters, including classes in RICO law.
Per a transcript of Wade's damning deposition before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee:
Q: Prior to your appointment as special prosecutor, had you ever worked in a district attorney's office?
WADE: No.
[...]
Q: Had you ever worked on a RICO case or a racketeering case?
[...]
WADE: Are you asking if I've ever participated in the prosecution of a RICO case?
Q: Correct.
WADE: The answer is no.
Q: No. So this was the first case where you were prosecuting a RICO case?
WADE: Yes.
Q: And how did you get up to speed on the contours? Obviously, RICO is a complex law. Not talking about while you were on the job, but prior to taking the position on, did you do any study of the RICO law?
[...]
WADE: I absolutely did. I went to [...] what I would call RICO school to learn about what it is, what it means, and how it works. It's a very complicated legal concept.
No one oversaw Wade's work once he was hired to head the Trump prosecution team. Aside from Willis, Wade had "ultimate authority" over the case.
In sworn statements, Willis said her lover "made much more money than the other special prosecutors only because Wade did much more work." To this day, she insists that their affair "never involved direct or indirect financial benefit."
For now, Atlanta allows Fulton County to use the city's detention center due to overcrowding on Rice Street. Atlanta charges $50 a day per inmate from Fulton County, and the inmate population is not to exceed 700. However, the intergovernmental agreement—struck in 2022—lasts only four years with no option to renew.
Prior to the partnership's approval, the city planned on ending all detention at the facility and fully converting it into a so-called "diversion" social services center, an alternative to incarceration. "In four years, once we cut off this process of having inmates in ACDC [Atlanta Community Detention Center], then we turn ourselves into what the next future is, which is not with us being in the jailing business," Atlanta's Democrat Mayor Andre Dickens vowed.
In September, the Atlanta City Council greenlighted a $3 million plan to transform two floors of the facility into a place for the "restorative justice" program. Soft-on-crime officials previously sought to close down the detention center entirely. Instead, the space will serve as "a pre-arrest drop-off point" for law enforcement. From there, social workers and mental health professionals would provide "a supportive environment" to arrestees. Dickens said the initiative will ultimately "end the cycle of needless incarceration."