Court Awards Judicial Watch $21,578 ‘Fees and Costs’ in Open Records Lawsuit against Fani Willis

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that the Superior Court in Fulton County, GA, issued an order granting $21,578 “attorney’s fees and costs” in the open records lawsuit for communications Willis had with Special Counsel Jack Smith and the House January 6 Committee. The order followed a previous order finding that Willis was in default in the lawsuit. 

Judicial Watch filed this lawsuit in March 2024 filed after Willis falsely denied having any records responsive to Judicial Watch’s earlier Georgia Open Records Act (ORA) request for communications with Special Counsel Jack Smiths office and/or the January 6 Committee (Judicial Watch Inc. v. Fani Willis et al. (No. 24-CV-002805)).  

After finding Willis in default, the court ordered a court hearing on December 20, which resulted in the order yesterday, finding Willis liable for fees and expenses that “shall be paid within two weeks of the entry of this Order.” The order recounts the timeline of events after Judicial Watch filed its records request:

Plaintiff [Judicial Watch] submitted an Open Records Act (ORA) request to Defendant on 22 August 2023 by way of Fulton County’s ORA on-line “portal”. That same day, Plaintiff received confirmation that its request had been delivered and would be channeled to the “appropriate department” (presumably the District Attorney’s Office). The following day, the County’s Open Records Custodian sent Plaintiff [Judicial Watch] an email confirming that the District Attorney’s Office had received the inquiry and asking Plaintiff to “simplify” its ORA [Open Records Act] request…. Literally five minutes later, before any simplification had occurred, Plaintiff received a second e-mail from the Records Custodian: “After carefully reviewing your request. (sic) We do not have the responsive records.”

This response was perplexing and eventually suspicious to Plaintiff, given that Plaintiff subsequently uncovered through own effort at least one document that should have been in the District Attorney’s Office’s possession that was patently responsive to the request. 

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Defendant [Willis] ultimately defaulted and this Court entered an Order on 2 December 2024 directing Defendant “to conduct a diligent search of her records for responsive materials” and to provide any responsive records that were not legally exempted from disclosure….

Defendant’s compliance with the Court’s 2 December Order consisted of an undated, unsigned two-page memo to Plaintiff from Defendant’s “Open Records Department.” … In this memo, Defendant announced that there still were no records responsive to one set of Plaintiff’s requests (communications with former Special Counsel Jack Smith) but that there were in fact records responsive to Plaintiff’s second set of requests (communications with the United States House January 6th Committee) – but those were exempt from disclosure….

Despite having previously informed Plaintiff four separate times that her team had carefully searched but found no responsive records, now there suddenly were – but they were not subject to disclosure under the ORA….

The ORA is not hortatory; it is mandatory. Non-compliance has consequences. One of them can be liability for the requesting party’s attorney’s fees and costs of litigation.

The court concludes its criticism of Willis’ actions, stating:

Most basically, by operation of law Defendant acknowledged violating the ORA when she defaulted. But actual evidence proves the same: per her Records Custodian’s own admission, the District Attorney’s Office flatly ignored Plaintiff’s original ORA request, conducting no search and simply (and falsely) informing the County’s Open Records Custodian that no responsive records existed. We know now that that is simply incorrect: once pressed by a Court order, Defendant managed to identify responsive records, but has categorized them as exempt. Even if the records prove to be just that – exempt from disclosure for sound public policy reasons – this late revelation is a patent violation of the ORA. And for none of this is there any justification, substantial or otherwise: no one searched until prodded by civil litigation.

Given this, the Court finds that relevant and reasonable attorney’s fees and costs of litigation are properly awardable to Plaintiff … Defendant is thus liable to Plaintiff for $21,578 pursuant to O.C.G.A. § 50-18-73(b). That amount shall be paid within two weeks of the entry of this Order. 

In early December, Willis finally admitted to having records showing communications with the January 6 Committee but refused to release all but one document in response to the court order that found her in default. She cited a series of legal exemptions to justify the withholding of communications with the January 6 Committee. The only document she did release is one already public letter to January 6 Committee Chairman Benny Thompson (D-MS).  

Judicial Watch subsequently filed a motion in asking the court to appoint a special master to oversee District Attorney Fani Willis’ search for records in Judicial Watch’s lawsuit and that the court to conduct an in camera (private) inspection of any records found. 

Judicial Watch stated in its motion that Willis’ response to the order “makes no showing that the search was diligent. Based on her previous searches in this matter, it probably was not diligent. Likewise, she provided no list or even a general description regarding any responsive records she has elected to withhold. Without a list or description, it is impossible to evaluate what, if any, exemptions or exceptions are applicable, as she now contends.”

Regarding the appointment of a special master, Judicial Watch states:

Willis by her own admission conducted at least three searches before finding any responsive records not already supplied by [Judicial Watch]. She did not even bother to conduct a search until the Complaint was filed. Her records custodian says he does not know the Cellebrite [digital investigations] equipment he apparently had a hand in ordering can be used to search cell phone texts and other data…. Moreover, the custodian had no standard practice for conducting searches and keeps no records of the methods used in a given search.

The foregoing gives rise to grave suspicion that all responsive records have not been found. The Court should appoint a special master to supervise and monitor the record searches. The special master should have authority to audit searches and conduct searches herself. She also should have authority to hire such consultants and experts as may be needed to execute her commission. The special master should make a recommendation to the Court as to how her fees and expenses should be allocated among the parties, taking into consideration whether she finds responsive records that Willis should have found but did not.

Fani Willis’s response to Judicial Watch’s request for a special master is due January 16, 2025.

“Fani Willis flouted the law, and the court is right to slam her and require, at a minimum, the payment of nearly $22,000 to Judicial Watch,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “But in the end, Judicial Watch wants the full truth on what she was hiding – her office’s political collusion with the Pelosi January 6 committee to ‘get Trump.’”

Judicial Watch is assisted in the case by John Monroe of John Monroe Law in Georgia.

Judicial Watch has several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits related to the prosecutorial abuse targeting Trump:

In February 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice asked a federal court to allow the agency to keep secret the names of top staffers working in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office that is targeting former President Donald Trump and other Americans.

(Before his appointment to investigate and prosecute Trump, Specia Counsel Jack Smith previously was at the center of several controversial issues, the IRS scandal among them. In 2014, a Judicial Watch investigation revealed that top IRS officials had been in communication with Jack Smith’s then-Public Integrity Section about a plan to launch criminal investigations into conservative tax-exempt groups. Read more here.)

In January 2024, Judicial Watch filed lawsuit against Fulton County, Georgia, for records regarding the hiring of Nathan Wade as a special prosecutor by District Attorney Fani Willis. Wade was hired to pursue unprecedented criminal investigations and prosecutions against former President Trump and others over the 2020 election disputes.

In October 2023, Judicial Watch sued the DOJ for records and communications between the Office of U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith and the Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney’s office regarding requests/receipt of federal funding/assistance in the investigation of former President Trump and his 18 codefendants in the Fulton County indictment of August 14, 2023. To date, the DOJ is refusing to confirm or deny the existence of records, claiming that to do so would interfere with enforcement proceedings. Judicial Watch’s litigation challenging this is continuing.

Through the New York Freedom of Information Law, in July 2023, Judicial Watch received the engagement letter showing New York County District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg paid $900 per hour for partners and $500 per hour for associates to the Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher law firm for the purpose of suing Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) in an effort to shut down the House Judiciary Committee’s oversight investigation into Bragg’s unprecedented indictment of former President Donald Trump.

In his new book Rights and Freedoms in Peril Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton details a long chain of abuses officials and politicians have made against the American people and calls readers to battle for “the soul and survival of America.”

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