‘A suitably preposterous sum’: Fani Willis contests $17 million bill in Trump election case

ATLANTA — Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is asking a judge to throw out the request by President Donald Trump and the other election interference defendants for an estimated $17 million in legal fees.

Channel 2’s Richard Elliot reports a new Georgia law says she’s on the hook for that money. That law was written specifically for Willis and the Trump election interference case.

If she were disqualified from the case and if the case was dismissed, then her office would have to pay the defendants’ legal fees. Both conditions exist, but more than one person says that law may not be entirely legal.

In her new filing, Willis calls the estimated $17 million legal bill for Trump and the other election interference defendants “a suitably preposterous sum.”

In her motion to have that bill thrown out, Willis says some of the claims include $1,000-a-night hotel rooms and seafood lunches costing hundreds of dollars often, she claims, paid for by the Georgia Republican Party and various Trump PACs.

“The defendants are asking that the district attorney’s budget and the taxpayers’ funds be handed over to the Trump campaign and the Georgia Republican Party for expenses including luxury hotels and seafood lunches,” the filing claims.

“There are a number of issues that we raised in our filing,” said Georgia Prosecuting Attorneys Council Director Pete Skandalakis.

After a judge disqualified Willis from the case, Skandalakis had to take it over and eventually dismissed all the charges.

He didn’t want to comment on Willis’ newest filing, but he also filed a motion saying he didn’t feel the law that allowed Trump and the others to get their legal bills paid by Fulton County taxpayers was constitutional, a law passed specifically for Willis and this case.

“And then we have the overall problem with, is it constitutional?And that’s another issue we raised,” Skandalakis said.

While a judge will have to decide, Willis writes in her motion that her office has no plans to pay the $17 million bill: “The district attorney has no intention of allowing Fulton County taxpayers to pay such an absurd amount for such an absurd reason.”

Channel 2 Action News did reach out to Trump’s Georgia attorney for comment but did not get a reply.

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