Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a rally March 26 in Commerce, Georgia. Photo by Alyssa Pointer/Reuters
ATLANTA (AP) — A judge on Tuesday will hear arguments over whether to release a report by a special grand jury tasked with investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies broke laws in trying to overthrow his to reverse narrow election defeat in 2020 Georgia.
Fulton County Superior Court Justice Robert McBurney will hear arguments from prosecutors, news outlets and possibly other parties before deciding whether to release the report. The special grand jury, overseen by McBurney, recommended publication of the report.
CONTINUE READING: What the Democratic victory in Georgia means for their agenda in the US Senate
The report is expected to include recommendations for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on a possible prosecution. However, it is unclear how specific these recommendations will be. The special grand jury did not have the authority to seek indictments, and it will ultimately be up to Willis to decide whether to seek indictments from a regular grand jury.
If McBurney decides to circulate the report, he must also decide whether to redact portions of it and whether to release the report now or later. It is unclear how soon he will rule.
The probe is one of several threatening potential legal ramifications for the Republican former president, who is seeking re-election in 2024. Over a period of about seven months, the special grand jury heard dozens of witnesses, including senior Trump allies, such as Attorney Rudy Giuliani and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and senior Georgia officials such as Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp.
Willis began investigating shortly after a recording of a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Raffensperger was released. In that appeal, the President suggested that the state’s top election official, a fellow Republican, could “round up” the votes needed to make up for his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
“I just want to find 11,780 votes, that’s one more than we have,” Trump said. “Because we won the state.”
REGARD: Rep. Liz Cheney says Trump knew ‘his allegations of voter fraud were false’
A coalition of news organizations including The Associated Press called for the report to be released in full, saying in a filing Monday that the document “remains a court record subject to the presumption of openness” under the rules state courts and state and federal constitutions. The media group said the public interest in the report was “extraordinary” and that there was “insufficient counter-interest to overcome the suspicion”.
Willis, a Democrat, had not submitted a letter as of Monday setting out whether the report should be released.
Trump’s legal team in Georgia said in a statement that they have no plans to attend or attend the hearing.
“To date, we have never been part of this process,” wrote Drew Findling, Marissa Goldberg, and Jennifer Little, noting that the former president was never subpoenaed or asked to voluntarily participate in the investigation.
“Hence, we can assume that the grand jury did its job of examining the facts and the law, as we did, and concluded that there were no violations of the law by President Trump,” they wrote she.
The order, which granted Willis’ request for a special grand jury, empowered the panel “to make prosecution recommendations in its sole discretion.”
A grand jury handbook issued by the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia states that courts have repeatedly ruled that a grand jury “shall not include in any report or general presentation any comment alleging or alleging wrongdoing by any identifiable person.” According to the manual, this can only be done in an indictment document, such as an indictment.
“I don’t think you can charge anyone specifically with committing a crime, so it has to be a general recommendation” on whether the district attorney should go ahead with the investigation, said Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council report.
If the special grand jury does recommend indicting certain individuals, he believes it should be redacted before the report is released, Skandalakis said.
While the work of the special grand jury took place in secret, as required by law, relevant public court records provided insight into the investigative issues being pursued. These included:
- Phone calls from Trump and others to Georgia officials in the wake of the 2020 election.
- A group of 16 Georgia Republicans who signed a charter in December 2020 falsely claiming Trump had won the state and that they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified” voters.
- False allegations of voter fraud made at state legislature meetings at the Georgia Capitol in December 2020.
- Copying data and software from voting machines in rural Coffee County by a computer forensics team hired by Trump allies.
- Alleged attempts to pressure Fulton County poll worker Ruby Freeman into falsely admitting to voter fraud.
- The sudden resignation of the US attorney in Atlanta in January 2021.
