washington —
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani testified Wednesday before a special panel in Atlanta, Georgia, investigating former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the result of the state’s 2020 presidential election.
Georgia is one of six battleground states that Trump lost to Democratic challenger Joe Biden and then falsely claimed he won, filing legal challenges and urging local officials to overturn official results.
The chief prosecutor in Fulton County, which covers the city of Atlanta, has been investigating whether Trump and his associates illegally interfered in the Georgia election.
Bill Thomas, an attorney for Giuliani, declined to comment on Giuliani’s six-hour testimony behind closed doors.
“I can tell you we were ordered to be here, we showed up, we did what we had to do,” Thomas told reporters outside the Fulton County Courthouse. “The grand jury process is a secret process and we will respect that.”
Prior to the testimony, another Giuliani attorney had implied that Giuliani would refuse to answer questions about his discussions with Trump by claiming attorney-client privilege. Giuliani could also have invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination.
Trump’s former personal attorney was ordered by a judge last month to appear as a special-purpose witness before the grand jury, but was recently informed he is now a target of the rapidly evolving investigation, his attorney said Monday .
The change in Giuliani’s status doesn’t mean the longtime Trump friend will be charged, but it does increase the likelihood of his criminal liability, making him the person closest to the former president who may face charges for his role in subversion Election result, according to legal experts.
Georgia, United States
Being designated a target of an investigation indicates that “the prosecutor believes there is substantial evidence that the person committed a crime,” said Kimberly Wehle, a former federal prosecutor who is now a law professor at the University of Baltimore is.
Giuliani isn’t the only Trump confidante ordered to testify before the Georgia grand jury, which formed earlier this year and has received testimony from several other witnesses. Several other attorneys linked to the Trump efforts in Georgia have also been called to testify.
Another influential Trump ally who has been subpoenaed to testify is Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. Prosecutors want to question him about two phone calls he had with Georgian Foreign Minister Brad Raffensperger in November 2020 to inquire whether certain mail-in ballots could be discarded.
Graham, who says the calls served a legislative purpose, asked a judge on Wednesday to block his appearance next week.
In addition, last month Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis briefed 16 people who falsely claimed to be pro-Trump electors after the state confirmed Joe Biden as the winner that they were targets of their investigations.
All of this has increased the legal stakes for Trump, who recently kept a native [Georgia] law firm to represent him in connection with the investigation.
While Willis hasn’t publicly identified the former president as the target of her investigation, Trump appears to be the primary target, said John Malcolm, a former Georgia federal attorney who is now a vice president of the Institute for Constitutional Government at the Conservative Heritage Foundation.
“The critical person in this investigation is pretty clearly Donald Trump, not Rudy Giuliani. [former Trump lawyer] Cleta Mitchell or alternative voters,” Malcolm said, referring to Willis.
Drew Findling, one of the attorneys representing Trump in Georgia, did not respond to a question for comment.
Giuliani, a longtime Trump friend from New York, became one of Trump’s most vocal advocates after the November 2020 presidential election, when Trump sought to challenge election results in key states that catapulted Biden to victory.
One of those states was Georgia, which Biden won by 11,779 votes.
In December 2020, Giuliani traveled to the state to advise Georgia lawmakers that the state’s election had been marred by widespread voter fraud and urged them to nominate an alternate slate of presidential voters for Trump. He showed lawmakers video allegedly showing suspicious suitcases of ballots at a vote counting center.
Rudy Giuliani, personal attorney for former U.S. President Donald Trump, arrives in a video still at a courthouse on August 17, 2022 to face a special jury regarding an investigation into the 2020 election in Atlanta, Georgia.
Giuliani’s claims have been roundly refuted by state and federal officials. But that didn’t stop Trump from calling Raffensperger, the state’s top election official, in early January 2021 and asking him to “seek” him 11,780 votes — one vote more than Biden’s lead to victory.
All this seems to be studied in Georgia. Willis, the Georgia prosecutor, has largely kept quiet about her investigation, but in a letter to state officials last year, she revealed that she was investigating several possible violations of Georgia law: solicitation of voter fraud, misrepresentation to local officials, conspiracy, racketeering, oath violations, and Involvement in violence or threat of violence.
Clark Cunningham, a law professor at Georgia State University, said Giuliani’s allegedly false statements to the Georgia legislature are grounds for questioning his behavior.
“He made many statements about voter fraud, and if he had known those statements contained false information, he would have committed a felony under Georgia law,” Cunningham said in an interview.
Additionally, Giuliani could be charged under Georgia’s Racketeering and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law for his role in promoting the falsified election manifesto, Cunningham said.
Recent District Attorney’s Office court filings suggest that prosecutors believe “Giuliani was directly involved in promoting this so-called fake election program here in Georgia,” Cunningham said.
The Special Purpose Grand Jury does not have the authority to return an indictment, but it can recommend criminal charges.
Once Willis receives the special grand jury report, she can appeal to a regular grand jury for indictments.
If Willis decides to pursue RICO charges, Trump could be implicated, Wehle said.
“Trump called Raffensperger and asked him to find 11,780 votes, so he’s caught up in it — in more ways than one,” Wehle said.
But Malcolm of the Heritage Foundation scoffed at the notion that Trump and his associates could be indicted under RICO.
“These aren’t mobsters and consiglieres,” Malcolm said. “These are the President of the United States and attorneys. Well, Rudy Giuliani — and, for that matter, John Eastman and Sydney Powell — may have given the President terribly bad advice, but it’s still advice.
Trump has defended his call to Raffensperger and denied any wrongdoing. In a statement to the Law & Crime website, Findling called the Georgia Special Grand Jury investigation “misguided and overdone”.
Fulton County prosecutors have subpoenaed virtually every key player involved in the Trump campaign’s alleged attempt to overturn the Georgia election result, Cunningham said.
“This indicates that this is a very comprehensive and vigorous investigation being conducted here in Atlanta,” Cunningham said.
