The Biden Justice Department "invited" Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to apply for a lucrative sole-source grant in 2022 at the same time that she was pursuing an election interference investigation against Donald Trump, the eventual GOP competitor to President Joe Biden, internal correspondence obtained by Just the News reveals.

“I want to document your recognition of our progress and services provided with dynamic partners, as we complete sole source steps for our new grant award, a grant in which you invited us to apply,” Willis wrote to Justice Department Senior Policy Advisor Scott Pestridge in the Office of Justice Programs in December 2022.  

The district attorney was highlighting the Justice Department’s 2022 Office of Justice Programs Community Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative grant, from which her office ultimately received $2,000,000 to implement its programs, agency records show. 

Willis' office given millions by Biden DOJ at the same time she was prosecuting Trump

That award, which was opened in April 2022 as a competitive grant, appears to have been provided to Fulton County as the “sole source,” according to the district attorney. The Justice Department defines a sole source procurement as “noncompetitive,” meaning no other entity competed against Fulton for the award. 

This award, which Willis said her office would use for community programs dedicated to ensure “at-risk” youth do not fall into crime or help them reintegrate into society if they do, was just a fraction of the more than $18,000,000 in funding the Justice Department’s Office of Justice Policy gave the Fulton prosecutor’s office from the time Willis took office in 2021 until 2024. 

You can read the letter below: 

The letter was contained in a trove of thousands of pages of documents turned over after Just the News, alongside the nonprofit public interest law firm America First Legal (AFL), sued Willis for the records under Georgia's Open Records Law. Willis, a longtime Trump nemesis, sought to hide many of the records with claims of legal privilege during a prolonged legal fight. 

In a reaction to the lawsuit, Willis' office this week dropped all privilege claims and released all the documents without any redactions, providing to Just the News — and the public — more information than it ultimately did to congressional Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee.

The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News. 

Collaboration of Willis, White House and Congressional Democrats to pursue Trump

Beyond the grant details, the documents show that Willis’ office coordinated extensively with the Biden Justice Department and White House as well as Democrats on the House Jan. 6 investigative committee as she built a failed criminal case against President Donald Trump and his allies, Just the News reported on Wednesday. 

The award of the noncompetitive grant for Willis came while her office was preparing that case and while federal prosecutors were investigating Trump under similar pretexts. 

Willis, who became Fulton County District Attorney in January 2021, vowed from the earliest days of her term to pursue an investigation into President Trump, who left office at the end of that month. On February 10th, 2021, Willis announced that she was opening a probe into Trump for violations of Georgia state law to include “solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local governmental bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office and any involvement in violence or threats related to the election’s administration.”

In early January, President Trump had claimed that the election in the state was marred by fraud and urged state officials to intervene in the process. Several Trump allies were also investigated over an effort to form and send to Congress an alternate slate of presidential electors to challenge the official results that they believed were possibly invalidated by fraud.

By August 2023, Willis indicted Trump and allies on state racketeering, conspiracy and other charges after the more than two-years-long investigation. Under Willis, Georgia became the first state to do so, followed later by fellow Democrat prosecutors in Arizona and Wisconsin who also went after Trump allies. 

Eighteen other people, including Trump's former lawyer Rudy Giuliani and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, were also indicted in Georgia, accused of aiding Trump in a bid to change the outcome of the state's 2020 election. You can read that indictment here.

The state indictment came only days after Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a similar indictment in Washington alleging that by engaging in efforts to challenge the 2020 election outcome, President Trump had defrauded the United States. He was also charged with attempting to obstruct an official proceeding and conspiracy against rights. 

Though the apparent reclassification of the violence prevention grant from competitive to noncompetitive has not previously been reported, Congress first raised concerns that the grant money flowing into the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office (FCDAO) may have been used to pay the special prosecutor Willis assigned to the case, Nathan Wade. 

Both Wade and Willis faced scrutiny in 2023 after their romantic relationship was exposed in court by a lawyer for one of the Trump allies charged in the Georgia case. Financial records showed that Willis hired her romantic partner to prosecute Trump and paid him more than $600,000 in legal fees while they were in a relationship. 

Georgia judge demands Willis' lover recuse himself from case against Trump

Willis and Wade both admitted to a relationship, though they both insisted it began after Willis hired him. Wade ultimately stepped down from the case in March 2023 after a Georgia judge made his stepping aside a condition of allowing Willis to remain on the case after evidence of an improper financial and romantic relationship emerged. 

In January 2024, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan demanded documents from Willis and Wade, probing whether the pair collaborated with the Biden Justice Department on the prosecution of Trump and whether any of the federal grants were used to compensate Wade for his work. He issued a subpoena for those documents the following month. "The FCDAO reportedly compensated you using a concoction of comingled [sic] funds, including monies confiscated or seized by the FCDAO and monies directed from Fulton County's 'general' fund,” Jordan wrote to Wade. 

“The Committee has information that the FCDAO received approximately $14.6 million in grant funds from the Department of Justice between 2020 and 2023 and, given the enormous legal fees you have billed to the FCDAO, there are open questions about whether federal funds were used by the FCDAO to finance your prosecution,” he added. 

The Trump Justice Department had also reportedly opened its own probe into Fani Willis. In September, it issued a subpoena for the prosecutor’s travel records related to trips abroad around the time of the 2024 election, The New York Times reported.

Willis was ultimately removed as the prosecutor overseeing the Georgia case against Trump. The Georgia Court of Appeals issued a decision holding Willis accountable for prosecutorial misconduct and conflict of interest during her hunt to get Trump, primarily based on her relationship with Wade. 

The case against Trump was eventually dismissed by a Georgia judge in November last year after Trump won his second non-consecutive term in the White House. The lead prosecutor that replaced Wade said that his office would not pursue the case any further, citing the difficulty of compelling a sitting president to stand trial.

When the case was dismissed, Georgia's prosecution, led by Willis, was the last remaining probe of the president’s conduct during the 2020 election dispute after Smith dropped his own federal case following Trump’s election victory.