- Georgia grand jury to consider evidence against Trump’s election overturn efforts
- Investigation expanded into inquiry on Trump and allies’ election influence attempts
- Second grand jury expected to handle case, potential indictments between July and September
A Georgia grand jury will hear evidence against ex-president Donald Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Mr. Trump may be charged by the Atlanta grand jury for trying to reverse his narrow state loss.
The Republican has denied malfeasance and called the investigation a “witch hunt.”
In early 2021, Democratic Fulton County District Attorney Fani Wallis initiated an investigation.
The two-and-a-half-year probe has widened to include Mr. Trump and his supporters’ many attempts to sway the election.
These efforts include a January 2021 phone call between Mr. Trump and the state’s chief elections official, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which the then-president suggested that state officials could “find” more than 11,000 ballots, sufficient to give him a victory in that state.
In the call recording, Mr. Raffensperger is heard responding that Georgia’s results are accurate.
In the months following his departure from the White House, Mr. Trump continued to make unsubstantiated claims of widespread electoral fraud and to assert that he had his ballots stolen.
But Mr. Trump, the current frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, continues to deny the results of the 2020 presidential election and has referred to the investigation as a “political witch hunt,” characterizing his conversation with Mr. Raffensperger as “perfect.”
A second grand jury
The Georgia case has already been considered by a grand jury. Over the course of six months in 2012, a special grand jury questioned dozens of witnesses, including several prominent Republicans.
It might issue subpoenas and write a report with suggestions, but not press criminal charges.
The Georgia special grand jury did not find rampant election fraud, but it did recommend multiple indictments for alleged perjury.
The judge presiding over the case stated that a substantial portion of the special grand jury’s report was withheld from the public to safeguard the rights of “potential future defendants.”
A brief section of the report, however, revealed that “a majority of the grand jury believes that one or more of the witnesses who testified before it may have committed perjury.” The unsealed portions do not disclose which witnesses may have perjured themselves.
Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta and its suburbs, begins a new grand jury term Tuesday. One of the two 26-member panels is expected to handle the case against Mr. Trump and his allies.
Ms. Willis and her colleagues must present their case to one of the grand juries on Tuesday.
Ms. Wallis also informed local officials in a letter that prospective indictments in the case could be issued between 11 July and 1 September, coinciding with the most recent two-month term of Fulton County’s grand juries.
Mr. Trump also faces allegations in two separate criminal investigations in New York and Florida. Which he denies, and was ordered to pay millions of dollars to a writer for sexual abuse.
