An indignant letter to the district attorney of Georgia’s Fulton County, Fani Willis, from the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Representative Jim Jordan, throws into relief the tensions between federal lawmakers and the state prosecutor trying a president.

The missive comes on the heels of a subpoena sent by Mr. Jordan’s committee last month to Ms. Willis concerning the “receipt and use of federal grant funds” —  more than $14 million — “issued by the U.S. Department of Justice.” Mr. Jordan writes that three weeks after the subpoena was issued, the prosecutor responded with a letter in which she “smeared a former employee of yours who spoke out about your misuse of federal grant funds.”

Ms. Willis defends her office’s use of those funds, writing that Fulton County’s “federal grant programs are focused on helping at-risk youth and seeking justice for sexual assault victims who were too long ignored.” She adds that “our federal grant-funded Sexual Assault Kit Initiative has been cited by the United States Attorney General as a model program.” 

In seeking to fend off the subpoena, Ms. Willis has written to Mr. Jordan that there is “no justification in the Constitution for Congress to interfere with a state criminal matter.” She added that Mr. Jordan’s “job description as a legislator does not include criminal law enforcement, nor does it include supervising a specific criminal trial.”

State jurisdiction over law enforcement can be sourced to the 10th Amendment, which ordains that the “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” In 1954, the Supreme Court explained that “peace and quiet, law and order … are some of the more conspicuous examples of the traditional application of the police power.” 

Ms. Willis has appealed to “settled constitutional law” for the propositions that both federalism and the separation of powers mandate that state executive officials — like Ms. Willis — are impervious to the meddling of solons at the Capitol. She accuses Mr. Jordan of lacking a “basic understanding of the law, its practice, and the ethical obligations of attorneys generally and prosecutors specifically.” Mr. Jordan, though, asserts that her use of federal funds subjects her to oversight.  

Ms. Willis has until March 28 to comply with the subpoena or, Mr. Jordan warns, she could face contempt charges. She maintains that the demands levied upon her are “overbroad and unduly burdensome.” The lawmaker declares that he will “not dignify your attacks on this brave whistleblower, or your continued attempts to distract from your conduct through misdirection.”

That whistleblower, Amanda Timpson, alleges that $488,000 that was earmarked to Ms. Willis’s office for the creation of a Center of Youth Empowerment and Gang Prevention was instead used for MacBooks, travel, and “swag.” Ms. Timpson, who is Black, also says that some of her colleagues in the office mocked her for her hairstyle.

Ms. Timpson was demoted and later fired shortly after making her concerns known, with Mr. Jordan writing that Ms. Willis “had her escorted out of her office by seven armed investigators.” 

Ms. Willis is, with respect to efforts to disqualify her from the prosecution of President Trump, fending off allegations that she paid more than $650,000 to a former lover, Nathan Wade, who then used those funds to pay for joint trips. Mr. Jordan’s committee is also looking into Mr. Wade’s employment as Ms. Willis’s deputy on the Trump case, and the possible use of federal funds to sponsor his activities.   

Mr. Jordan warns that if Ms. Willis does not respond — to the committee’s satisfaction — by noon on the 28th, he will initiate a  “contempt of Congress proceeding.” That statute makes it a crime to  “willfully” fail to comply with a valid congressional subpoena “upon any matter under inquiry before either House … or any committee of either House of Congress.”

Congress, though, cannot on its own enforce a subpoena — that is a job for the Department of Justice, which, at least under Attorney General Garland, appears unlikely to pursue that course. Mr. Jordan acknowledges that Ms. Willis’s office has “produced a narrow set of documents in response to the subpoena,” but calls her overall compliance “deficient.”