Trump to Seek Millions In Damages From Fani Willis After Botched Prosecution
President Donald Trump is seeking nearly $6.3 million from Fulton County, Georgia, in connection with a dismissed case against him, which was pursued by District Attorney Fani Willis. In 2023, Willis indicted Trump under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, alleging that he acted illegally in his efforts to contest the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The case was eventually dismissed, and in December 2024, the Georgia Court of Appeals stated that a lower court had erred in allowing Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade, who is also her romantic partner, to choose between stepping aside.
The court ruled that the “significant appearance of impropriety” meant Willis and her office should be “wholly disqualified.” Willis appealed that decision, but she lost in court.
This incident led to a motion seeking to recover $6.3 million in attorneys’ fees, referencing a Georgia law that stipulates that when a district attorney is dismissed, the defendant in the case “shall” be entitled to a payout.
The motion filed by attorney Steve Sadow, representing Trump, spans three pages and includes approximately 200 pages of attachments detailing the costs Trump seeks reimbursement for.
Arguing the law “mandates such recovery when a prosecuting attorney is disqualified due to improper conduct and the case is dismissed,” the motion said Willis launched a “politically motivated, lengthy investigation.”
“This dismissal paves the way for the award of reasonable attorney fees and litigation expenses,” the motion said.
“Each of the necessary elements have been met: DA Willis was disqualified based upon improper conduct, the criminal case was dismissed, and the criminal case was pending when the statute went into effect. This motion is timely filed,” the document added, noting as well that co-defendants in the case can also seek reimbursement.
“President Trump intends to adopt the motions for attorney fees and costs filed by his co-defendants,” a footnote said. “He will do so in a separate pleading after all such motions are filed.”
Willis snapped again this week at former defendants in the election interference cases for attempting to recoup their legal fees.
“We’re gonna fight with everything we legally can in that particular case. The law’s unconstitutional and just wrong in so many ways,” Willis told Channel 2 Investigative Reporter Mark Winne.
A state law passed last year allows President Trump and others charged in the Willis office’s election interference case to try to get their legal fees back since the charges were dropped.
Willis says she will go to court to fight against having to pay the defense lawyers about $17 million in legal fees.
“The first problem is that the law was written with the intent of legislators trying to help their friends, and so whenever you do something for a wrong purpose, it’s going to work out wrongly. It’s terribly written. It looks like they wrote it on the back of a napkin,” Willis said.
Chris Anulewicz, an attorney, told Winne that he represents one of the former defendants. He says he doesn’t think the law is badly written, as it was created in response to what Willis and her office did, which he believes was wrong.
Willis says that to get the fees, the prosecutor has to say that the defendant did something wrong. It was decided that there was an appearance of wrongdoing, but courts found no actual wrongdoing.
Anulewicz says that the law in question would cover even behavior that seems wrong.
Willis says lawyers are trying to get money back for things like hotel rooms that cost over $1,000 a night and seafood lunches that cost over $300.
Last month, Willis mounted an aggressive defense of her failed prosecution of Trump and his allies, testifying for more than three hours before a Georgia Senate panel investigating her conduct in the high-profile election interference case.
Top DHS Special Agent And His Wife Found Dead
A Department of Homeland Security special agent and his wife were found dead in their New Jersey home in what appears to be a murder-suicide, prosecutors said.
Police in Sayreville responded to the couple’s home on Glynn Court around 8 p.m. July 3 and found Kelly Latauro, 46, dead inside the residence, the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office said.
Her husband, 52-year-old Christopher Latauro, was discovered dead in the backyard.
Both appear to have been shot.
Authorities said Christopher is believed to be the shooter and the case is being investigated as a murder-suicide.
Police told residents to keep away from Glynn Court, from Deerfield Road to Scarlet Drive, briefly because of police activity.
The area was reopened about 40 minutes later, but police remained on scene.
According to NJ101.5, citing DHS records from 2019 and 2020, Christopher was a special agent for the Department of Homeland Security.
Authorities have not said what may have sparked the violence.
Kelly’s sister-in-law Robyn Perlman-Spencer confirmed her death in a Facebook post on July 7, remembering her in a heartbreaking tribute.
“As many of you may now know, my beautiful sister in law Kelly Iatauro was senselessly and suddenly taken from us on Friday. Kelly was a bright light- kind, thoughtful, hysterical, inappropriate, and just one of the most amazing people I’ve ever known. She left a lasting impression on anyone that was lucky enough to know her,” Robyn wrote in part.
Sayreville police confirmed officers responded to the Glynn Court residence on July 3 and found both people dead of gunshot wounds.
The incident is being treated as a murder-suicide, and Christopher is suspected to be the shooter, the spokesperson said.
The Department of Homeland Security and Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office did not immediately respond to additional requests for comment on the case.
What began as a heavy police response to a deadly scene left two people dead and the quiet Middlesex County neighborhood stunned.
Investigators are still trying to piece together what happened inside the home leading up to the gunfire.
Separately, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin made headlines last week with an election-related announcement.
Mullin on Friday said officials who don’t cooperate with the administration’s election security efforts may be slapped with fines — and potentially prison time.
“If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections — and they chose not to — then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties, and even, depending on how far it goes, prison time,” Mullin said during a press conference at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
Mullin also promised DHS would work to “speed up our security enhancements” for states.
He vowed to hold up federal election security grants until state officials took steps the administration demanded, including running their voter registration lists through a system that checks for non-citizen voters on the rolls.
Mullin made his comments after President Donald Trump’s primetime address on election security Thursday night, when he repeated already known concerns about the security of voting systems, alleged Chinese efforts to get into voter rolls, and aired old gripes about the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden.
In his remarks on Friday, the DHS secretary focused on DHS’s work with states to secure election systems and scrub voter registration rolls for fraud and concerns about noncitizen voting.
The Justice Department also sent letters this month threatening prosecution to election officials across the country if they don’t remove noncitizens from their voter rolls.
On Friday, Mullin seemed to suggest that the agency was able to estimate the numbers using the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and said 23 states are already working with DHS to analyze voter rolls.
And he criticized the legal challenges that are hindering the administration’s efforts: Last month, a judge blocked the Trump administration from creating a database of information about Americans, including Social Security numbers and citizenship status.
