Fani Willis did get some good news on Wednesday, but things also got much worse.
The news that Nathan Wade reached a temporary divorce settlement with his estranged wife was a small victory for her. For the moment, it looks like Willis won’t have to testify in the divorce proceedings or have to answer questions under oath about her affair with Mr. Wade.
But her celebration was likely short-lived because of a leaked recording that has been brought to light. Now, Fani Willis stands accused of firing an employee who blew the whistle on her department’s misuse of federal funds. Amanda Timpson, an employee at the district attorney’s office, can be heard on the recording expressing major concern over one of Willis’s aides boasting about misusing a federal grant for “swag” and unauthorized expenses.
The Washington Free Beacon reports:
According to Timpson, the aide, Michael Cuffee, planned to use part of a $488,000 federal grant—earmarked for the creation of a Center of Youth Empowerment and Gang Prevention—to pay for “swag,” computers, and travel.
“He wanted to do things with grants that were impossible, and I kept telling him, like, ‘We can’t do that,'” Timpson told Willis in a Nov. 19, 2021, meeting. “He told everybody … ‘We’re going to get MacBooks, we’re going to get swag, we’re going to use it for travel.’ I said, ‘You cannot do that, it’s a very, very specific grant.'”
“I respect that is your assessment,” Willis responded. “And I’m not saying that your assessment is wrong.”
Later in the conversation, Willis apologized to Timpson, and said Cuffee had “failed” her administration.
You can listen to the recording here:
Despite Willis agreeing with Timpson, a mere two months later, the DA took a starkly different course of action and terminated Timpson.
Less than two months later, Willis abruptly terminated Timpson and had her escorted out of her office by seven armed investigators, according to Timpson. When Timpson filed a whistleblower complaint the following year that alleged wrongful termination, Willis’s office issued a statement describing Timpson as a “holdover from the prior administration” who was terminated because of her “failure to meet the standards of the new administration.”
Timpson’s experience sheds further light on how Willis—who campaigned on the promise of restoring “integrity” to the district attorney’s office—does business. The Democrat has come under fire amid revelations that she tapped her lover, Nathan Wade, to handle the office’s racketeering case against former president Donald Trump. Willis is also alleged to have misappropriated taxpayer funds to facilitate her affair with Wade, a married man with scant prosecutorial experience.
If Timpson’s accusations of planned misuse of funds were accurate, the abrupt shift in Willis’s stance from apparent understanding to decisive action against the whistleblower, not Cuffee, is just the latest proof of how corrupt she is.
“My case and Nathan Wade’s case are very similar when you break them down point by point,” Timpson told the Washington Free Beacon. “Ethical violations, abuse of power, and the misuse of county, state, and federal funds.”
Related: Trump Prosecutor Fani Willis’s Troubles Just Got Much Worse