ATLANTA (AP) — A judge has ordered Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to pay more than $54,000 in attorneys’ fees and to turn over documents after finding that her office violated Georgia’s Open Records Act.

Attorney Ashleigh Merchant represents former Trump campaign staffer Michael Roman, one of the 18 people indicted in August 2023 along with President Donald Trump on allegations that they illegally tried to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia. Merchant sued in January 2024, alleging that the district attorney’s office had failed to turn over public records she had requested.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Rachel Krause found that the failures to comply with the records law “were intentional, not done in good faith, and were substantially groundless and vexatious.” Because Willis and her office “lacked substantial justification” for not complying, Merchant is entitled to attorneys’ fees and litigation expenses totaling just over $54,000, Krause found.

Krause ordered Willis to search for and turn over all records responsive to Merchant’s requests. The documents and payment are to be delivered within 30 days of Friday’s order.

A spokesperson for Willis’ office said Monday that they plan to appeal the order.

Merchant posted Krause’s order on the social media platform X, writing, “Proud that we have judges willing to hold people in power accountable when they ignore the law!!!!”

Willis’ office was “openly hostile” to Merchant and testimony showed that Merchant’s requests “were handled differently than other requests,” Krause wrote in her order. Open records officer Dexter Bond said during a hearing that he refused to communicate by phone with Merchant, even though it was his regular practice to call the requester if a request was unclear.

Treating Merchant’s requests this way “indicates a lack of good faith,” Krause wrote.

Among the records Merchant sought were reports provided to Willis’ office by companies hired “to track the impact of Willis’ statements to the media and whether such statements were viewed favorably by the public,” according to a court filing. The filing says Willis began contracting with those companies just before she and her office sought to indict Trump, Roman and others.

Merchant also asked for a copy of the non-disclosure or confidentiality agreement that employees of the district attorney’s office are required to sign, as well as a list of attorneys Willis had hired.

The Georgia Court of Appeals in December ruled that Willis and her office could not continue to prosecute the election interference case against Trump and others. Willis in January asked the Georgia Supreme Court to review and reverse that ruling, and the high court has not yet said whether it will take up the case.

The intermediate appeals court’s ruling was based on an “appearance of impropriety” created by a romantic relationship Willis had with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom she had hired to lead the case. It was a bombshell filing by Merchant in January 2024 that first exposed that relationship publicly, alleging that the relationship created a conflict of interest that should disqualify Willis and her office from the case.

A grand jury in Atlanta indicted Trump and 18 others in August 2023, using the state’s anti-racketeering law to accuse them of participating in a wide-ranging scheme to illegally try to overturn Trump’s narrow 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden in Georgia. The alleged scheme included Trump’s call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger urging him to help find enough votes to beat Biden. Four people have pleaded guilty. Trump and the others, including Roman, have pleaded not guilty.

Even if the Georgia Supreme Court agrees to hear the case and eventually rules in Willis’ favor, it seems unlikely that she will be able to prosecute Trump while he’s the sitting president. But there are 14 other defendants, including Roman, who still face charges in the case.

Kate Brumback, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Monday declined to force the Trump administration to immediately reimburse dozens of public broadcasting stations for upgrades to the nation’s emergency alert system.

The nonprofit Corporation for Public Broadcasting sued the Federal Emergency Management Agency last Thursday, claiming the agency had unlawfully held up nearly $2 million in grant money for modernizing the alert system. The lawsuit says the delay in reimbursements is hampering the ability of federal, state and local authorities to issue real-time emergency alerts.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly denied a request for a court order and ruled that the CPB failed to carry its legal burden for showing how it has been irreparably harmed. The corporation hasn’t demonstrated that the alert system will stop working if the grant funding doesn’t start flowing right away, Kelly concluded as he rejected the CPB’s request for a temporary restraining order.

“This circuit has set a high standard for irreparable injury,” Kelly said. “I don’t think CPB has satisfied that high standard on the record here.”

The lawsuit is one of several cases in which Trump’s administration has been accused of illegally withholding funds for a host of programs and services.

The national Emergency Alert System helps government officials issue alerts about disasters, including flash floods, blizzards, tornados and hurricanes. The CPB, which is the federal government’s steward of funding for hundreds of public radio and television stations, says FEMA is pretending that it isn’t holding onto the grant money.

The CPB says the Feb. 18 hold prevents it from submitting requests for reimbursement under the $40 million grant program for the Next Generation Warning System. The grants help pay for public media stations to upgrade their emergency alerting equipment. The program has over 40 grant recipients.

Government lawyers deny that FEMA is withholding any program funding.

“Rather, the Agency has modified its process for the review of payment requests — a process that is consistent with its authority to protect the public fisc and ensure grant programs are free from waste, fraud, and abuse,” they wrote in a court filing.

The CPB’s attorneys say FEMA has presented no evidence of waste, fraud or abuse in the program.

“For close to three years, FEMA has been intimately involved every step of the way in terms of the specific sites receiving new emergency broadcast equipment, creating a FEMA pre-approved equipment list, receiving monthly and quarterly reports on the expenses incurred and the progress of the grant,” they wrote.

Congress created the CPB in 1967. The private corporation says it distributes over 70% of its funding to more than 1,500 public radio and television stations.

President Donald Trump nominated Kelly to the bench during his first term.

Michael Kunzelman, The Associated Press

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Kentucky’s Republican lawmakers have passed a measure to protect conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ youths as part of a bill that also would outlaw the use of Medicaid funds to pay for gender-affirming health care for transgender Kentucky residents.

The House vote occurred late Friday, less than an hour before the midnight deadline for the GOP-supermajority legislature to pass bills and retain its ability to override gubernatorial vetoes. The bill passed after the Senate version that prohibited the use of Medicaid was accepted by the House.

Conversion therapy is the scientifically discredited practice of using therapy to “convert” LGBTQ+ people to heterosexuality or traditional gender expectations.

GOP lawmakers voted to remove restrictions that Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear placed on the practice last year. He banned spending tax dollars to pay for the practice on minors, saying his executive order was needed to protect children. The order directed licensing boards to consider adopting strong policies disciplining someone found to have practiced conversion therapy on minors.

The measure voted on Friday, and denounced by Beshear, cleared both chambers by veto-proof margins. Lawmakers will take up vetoes while wrapping up this year’s session in late March.

Chris Hartman, executive director of the Fairness Campaign, a Kentucky-based LGBTQ+ advocacy group, called it one of the most “shameful” bills in Kentucky history.

Democratic Rep. Lisa Willner condemned conversion therapy as “discredited, dangerous, suicide-promoting practices.”

David Walls, executive director of The Family Foundation, a socially conservative group, called it a needed pushback against Beshear’s executive action, which Walls called an attack on free speech and religious freedom.

Knowing they had the votes for passage, Republican House members said little about the bill Friday night. Its lead sponsor, GOP Rep. David Hale, has said families should have access to the mental health care of their choice, and said his bill would protect mental health care professionals, institutions and ordained ministries from discrimination when providing counseling services.

The Kentucky debate comes amid the national battle over LGBTQ+ rights. The Supreme Court will use a recent case from Colorado to decide whether state and local governments can enforce laws banning conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ children.

Beshear, who is widely seen as a potential contender for the White House in 2028, last Thursday lambasted the bill meant to nullify his action against conversion therapy.

“Conversion therapy has been discredited by every major medical organization that’s looked at it,” the governor said. “It significantly increases the chances of suicide amongst our LGBTQ+ youth. It is equivalent of torture, and we should not be allowing it to happen here in the commonwealth. Those are children of God that deserve our protection.”

On the Medicaid part of the bill, Beshear said medical decisions should be left up to medical experts.

“We don’t determine someone’s health care based on the politics of the day,” he said.

House Republicans on Friday also gave final passage to a bill targeting the few dozen transgender people who are incarcerated in Kentucky. The measure would ban them from accessing gender-affirming health care. That bill was also sent to the governor.

The bill’s supporters have said it makes a clear distinction between essential medical treatments and elective procedures. Inmates will continue receiving medical care for legitimate conditions, they said, but the state will not fund what they called elective gender transition treatments.

“The idea that state taxpayers should be footing the bill for gender transition treatments of any individual, but especially those who have perpetrated harm against our commonwealth, is outrageous,” Walls said.

Hartman said the denial of prescribed medications to transgender inmates, under the guise of saving tax dollars, is cruel and unconstitutional.

In a floor speech late Friday summing up the House action, Democratic Rep. Sarah Stalker said lawmakers should have used the time on core issues like jobs, health care, public education and affordable housing instead of “continuing to go after such small populations of individuals who are already vulnerable.”

___

Associated Press writer Dylan Lovan in Louisville, Kentucky, contributed to this report.

Bruce Schreiner, The Associated Press