Posted on 03/10/2025 1:03:35 PM PDT by Signalman
A new Georgia reimbursement bill will allow President Donald Trump and his co-defendants to seek compensation for legal fees incurred in their Fulton County case because District Attorney Fani Willis was disqualified from prosecuting them.
The state's Senate unanimously passed the legislation, Senate Bill 244, by a vote of 55 to 0 on Thursday, paving the way for defendants in Georgia to recover attorney-related expenses and other court costs in proceedings where the DA is kicked off a criminal case due to prosecutorial misconduct.
Also under S.B. 244, if a judge dismisses an indictment altogether, a defendant could receive reimbursement for the case's entirety. The county in which the charges were originally brought would cover the compensation.
As for Trump, records show he has paid his top attorneys about $2.7 million, and the Georgia GOP spent at least $2 million on the legal defense of other Trump allies, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Trump's lead defense lawyer, Steve Sadow, called S.B. 244 "a good start."
"But a prosecuting attorney disqualified for misconduct should also be held individually responsible to pay the attorneys fees," Sadow said in a statement. "That would be a targeted incentive to play by the rules."
GOP Georgia state Sen. Brandon Beach said he had the Trump case—as well as the unethical actions of Willis—in mind when he sponsored the bill, believing that those defendants she went after deserve some sort of restitution.
"There's no reason those people should have been indicted," Beach remarked. "They've had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars defending themselves."
Willis is waiting to see whether the Georgia Supreme Court will hear her appeal on the appellate court's disqualification decision. Beach said the bill would apply to Trump's case if the Supreme Court decides not to reinstate Willis. The defense can then petition the court to recoup the costs, and an "appropriate amount," if approved, will be awarded accordingly.
Georgia Senate Minority Leader Harold Jones II, a Democrat representing Augusta, argued that the Trump case isn't subject to S.B. 244, claiming that Willis didn't commit misconduct as defined by the State Bar of Georgia.
Jones said that members of his caucus backed the bill for different reasons. Speaking in favor of S.B. 244 on the Senate floor Thursday, the lawmaker posed a hypothetical case involving a young defendant charged with possession of marijuana.
"If you have that young person, possession of marijuana, whatever it may be, and the prosecutor has done something wrong and that case is dismissed because the prosecutor did something wrong, they're entitled to have their attorney's fees back," Jones said. "That's actually something that we probably would have pushed many years ago."
In addition to Thursday's passage of S.B. 244, another measure passed last week that grants Georgia's Senate and House committees subpoena powers, thus further strengthening the state legislature's oversight authority.
Both bills come after a special Republican-led state Senate committee was formed to investigate allegations of wrongdoing leveled against Willis, including her hiring of special counsel Nathan Wade, whom she placed in charge of the Trump prosecution and had an undisclosed affair with. As part of the probe, the panel tried to subpoena Willis, but she refused to appear before the investigative body. A judge later ruled hat they can compel her to testify.
On the 2024 campaign trail, Willis suggested she isn't legally compelled to comply. "Well, first of all, I don't think they have the authority to subpoena me," a defiant Willis declared, "but they need to learn the law."
Willis previously complained about the committee's investigation "messing up my business," saying it's meddling with her affairs.
Ahead of a May 2024 committee hearing held inside the Georgia state Capitol building, Willis spoke at a soul food restaurant across town, where she played the race card for the umpteenth time. "The DA's office has done everything by the law. Funny that we need 'Big Brother' watching over us when DAs become black," she said, suggesting that the investigative committee is racially motivated.
"Isn't it interesting when we got a bunch of African American DAs, now we need Daddy to tell us what to do," Willis remarked at a campaign stop in K&K Soul Food's parking lot. "So, y'all can go put that in your sound bite for today, but today I am here so I can reach my community, and this is really messing up my business," Willis told a press gaggle, according to Atlanta News First.
Asked how she responds to residents concerned with the DA's office devoting substantial taxpayer resources to prosecuting high-profile matters, such as the Trump case, rather than tackling the backlog of criminal cases, Willis said: "I'm a sister. I can do all of it. I can prosecute high-profile cases, and I can prosecute everyday cases when they need to be prosecuted."
Willis, meanwhile, paid her lover more than $770,000—taken out of the county's coffers—for his work on the Trump case. At the time, the two took luxury trips around the world together, with Wade collecting paychecks via his county contract.
SHE NEEDS GRAY BAR HOTEL TIME-—LOTS OF IT.
Take anything they give you even if it’s a $1.25 and some green stamps, take it, take it then demand more.
How about damages from the kicked off DA?
I didn’t realize she was finally taken off the case.
The Judge kicked her off then the Georgia appeals court affirmed it. Unless she somehow wins at the Georgia Supreme Court level she is done.
Agreed, but she needs about fifty more lawsuits first so she knows what it feels like.
“Clearly this is a racist/sexist attack on me. If I were a white man this wouldn’t be happening!”
Can you hear it? I can.
Trump’s DOJ is also planning to Counterclaim whenever a democrat lawsuit filed in a democrat judge district court lawsuit challenging something the executive did (whew) is plainly political and lacking legal merit.
Put the blocks to them. Now.
Every communication between the Fulton DA and her boyfriend the White House and the DNC and law firms working for the DNC needs to be examined. I see a massive conspiracy to infringe on the civil rights of private citizen and Presidential candidate Donald J. Trump. And folks are going to have to pay. Likewise, I think that Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold needs some serious investigation to look at the coordination of her efforts to take Trump off the ballot in CO. That stinks of DNC/White House/Marc Elias involvement. And if it can be shown that this was coordinated and instigated by folks in DC (Biden, his staff, the DNC, their staff, allied law firms, etc.) folks will have to pay for that as well.
Can this work retroactively?
2025 hasn’t been good for Fani Willis thus far.
From this evening:
The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office has thirty days to pay more than $54,000 in attorneys’ fees for violating the Georgia Open Records Act, a judge wrote on Friday.
The Office must also turn over all applicable records within the same timeframe, wrote Fulton County Superior Court Judge Rachel Krause. It’s the latest development in a long-running open records dispute between the D.A.’s Office and defense attorney Ashleigh Merchant.
The judge found that the Fulton D.A.’s office had been “openly hostile” to Merchant and handled her Open Records Requests in a manner that “indicates a lack of good faith.”
In response, she ordered that the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office pay Merchant’s law firm $54,103.23 in attorneys’ fees. Judge Krause also ordered the D.A.’s Office to turn over “all responsive materials.”
Spokespeople for the Fulton D.A.’s Office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
link to Order here:
https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:US:da3b535b-9a7a-4a5f-b636-944a4bd08215
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