A judge in Fulton County, Georgia, will release portions of a report from a special grand jury that probed Donald Trump’s behaviour following the state’s 2020 election, but not specific charge recommendations.
Judge Robert C.I. McBurney stated in his order on Monday that the special grand jury’s introduction and conclusion, as well as the panel’s concerns about witnesses lying under oath, will be made public on Thursday. The judge emphasised that some of the content in those portions may still be suppressed.
Prosecutors in Georgia have actively probed whether Trump or any of his associates breached the law while attempting to overturn his defeat in the state’s 2020 election.
The special grand jury, which was forbidden from making indictments, completed its seven-month investigation by interviewing 75 witnesses, including Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, and South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham.
No one has been charged in the case yet, and now that the special grand jury has presented its findings, another grand jury would make those decisions.
Other special grand jury conclusions, particularly those recommending potential charges, will not be made public for the time being. This is due to the fact that some of individuals identified in the recommendations may not have appeared in grand jury proceedings thus far.
“Here, however, none of those due process rights have been satisfied for anyone listed in the special purpose grand jury’s final report who was not allowed the opportunity to appear before the grand jury,” McBurney wrote in the eight-page order issued on Monday.
“And for those who did appear – willingly or unwillingly – just the right to be heard (without counsel or rebuttal) was preserved,” McBurney continued.
A media consortium, including AWN, is requesting that the whole study be made public.
Last month, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis suggested that the special grand jury had recommended many indictments and that her decision on whether to file charges was “imminent.”
Willis, a Democrat, stated her opposition to make the special grand jury report public at a January court hearing in Atlanta, citing her continued deliberations on the charges.
“We want to make sure that everyone is handled properly, and we believe that releasing this report at this time is not suitable for future defendants to be treated fairly,” Willis said last month.
Willis’ extensive investigation tried to ascertain not only whether Trump committed crimes, but also whether there was a larger criminal conspiracy at work in the efforts to alter Georgia’s election results. Willis stated in document preservation requests to Georgia officials in February 2021 that she was investigating potential crimes such as election fraud solicitation, making false statements to government bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, oath violation, and violence or threats related to election administration.
The Georgia investigation was sparked by Trump’s hour-long phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in January 2021, in which he asked him to “find” the votes needed for Trump to win the Peach State.
The probe grew to include fraudulent charges of election fraud to state politicians, the phoney elector scheme, unauthorised individuals attempting to access voting equipment in one Georgia county, and threats and intimidation of poll officials. Willis also looked into the abrupt departure of Byung “BJay” Pak, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.
Willis named a number of persons as targets of her investigation along the road, including 16 Georgia Republicans who voted for Trump in 2020 and Giuliani, who was serving as Trump’s lawyer at the time.
A special grand jury does not make indictments, but it has more investigative powers than a regular grand jury in the state, including the authority to issue subpoenas for witness testimony, phone, email, and other information. It was up to the special grand jury to decide how much of that made it into the final report. If the special grand jury recommends any indictments, Willis could pursue them from the normal grand juries in Fulton County.
Willis previously stated that she may pursue Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) charges in this case, which would allow prosecutors to charge multiple defendants and make the case that Trump and his associates were part of a criminal enterprise, and she hired John Floyd, a lawyer with extensive experience in racketeering cases, to assist her office.
