As President Trump continues calling for investigations of his perceived political enemies, federal investigators are scrutinizing a trip that Fani T. Willis, the prosecutor who brought charges against him in Georgia, took to the Bahamas, according to a subpoena reviewed by The New York Times.
Ms. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., brought an election interference case against Mr. Trump and his allies in 2023, but was disqualified from continuing to prosecute the case last year. She took the Bahamas trip with some colleagues last November, after she was re-elected to a second term. Her office said on Monday that the trip was for a leadership training session and that campaign funds covered the cost.
“The district attorney attended a leadership training seminar in preparation for the start of her second term,” said Jeff DiSantis, a spokesman for Ms. Willis’s office. “Her chief investigator was also present on the trip,” he added. “No government funds were used by District Attorney Willis for expenses related to the training.”
The training session was organized by Vera Causa Group, a company that employs former prosecutors and offers training and consulting to prosecutors’ offices around the country. The training that Ms. Willis attended last fall included sessions with titles like “Things Have Changed: The Modern Prosecutor’s Guide to Media Management” and “Leadership for the Modern Prosecutor’s Office.”
Susan Ryan, a co-founder of Vera Causa, recalled the training as “very intensive,” adding, “D.A. Willis said it was the best professional training she had ever been to, and she couldn’t believe how much work it was. And I take that feedback as a source of pride.”
Politicians routinely use campaign funds to attend out-of-town conferences or fund-raising events. Under Georgia law, campaign funds may be used for “ordinary and necessary” expenses related to holding public office.
It is not clear if the Bahamas trip is the sole focus of the federal investigation or just one facet of it. Nor is it clear whether Ms. Willis is the target of the investigation, though Mr. Trump recently said that “she should be prosecuted.” In a social media post last month, he said that Ms. Willis and other prosecutors who brought or tried to bring cases against him “are now CRIMINALS who will hopefully pay serious consequences for their illegal actions.”
The New York Times revealed the existence of the federal investigation related to Ms. Willis last month. It is being led by Atlanta’s top federal prosecutor, Theodore S. Hertzberg, who was appointed by the Trump administration this year. Mr. Hertzberg’s office declined to comment.
This month, a prosecutor handpicked by Mr. Trump secured an indictment of New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, on charges of bank fraud and making false statements. Last month, James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, was indicted on one count of making a false statement and one count of obstructing a congressional proceeding in connection with his testimony before a Senate committee in September 2020.
Both indictments came at the president’s urging and over the objection of career prosecutors who found insufficient evidence to support charges.
Last Wednesday, in an appearance with leaders of the Justice Department, Mr. Trump called for the prosecution of Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought two criminal indictments against him. He also said that Andrew Weissmann, who was a lead prosecutor on the team investigating the 2016 Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia, and Lisa Monaco, the deputy attorney general under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., should be prosecuted.
The case that Ms. Willis brought against Mr. Trump and his allies, which accused them of orchestrating a “criminal enterprise” to reverse the results of the 2020 election in Georgia and subvert the will of voters, is in limbo. A state appeals court disqualified Ms. Willis from overseeing the case after revelations that she had engaged in a personal relationship with the lawyer she had hired to run it, Nathan Wade. Defense lawyers accused Ms. Willis of “self-dealing” by going on vacations with Mr. Wade that he paid for, at least in part, while he was employed by her office.
Those travels took place in 2022 and 2023. Mr. DiSantis said on Monday that Mr. Wade, who no longer works for Ms. Willis’s office, was not on the Bahamas trip last November.
In September, the Georgia Supreme Court declined to take up Ms. Willis’s appeal on the disqualification matter, leaving the case against Mr. Trump and his allies unlikely to proceed anytime soon, if at all.
Mr. Trump’s co-defendants in the case include Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff; Rudy Giuliani, the president’s onetime personal lawyer; and David Shafer, the former head of the Republican Party in Georgia.
Part of the basis for the indictment was a phone call Mr. Trump had made in January 2021 to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, asking Mr. Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to overturn the election results.
The Georgia case is separate from the Manhattan trial that led to Mr. Trump’s conviction last year on all 34 felony counts related to falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal.
Danny Hakim is a reporter on the Investigations team at The Times, focused primarily on politics.
Richard Fausset, a Times reporter based in Atlanta, writes about the American South, focusing on politics, culture, race, poverty and criminal justice.
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