The Georgia prosecutor investigating former President Donald Trump and his allies after the 2020 election is trying to compel U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and other members of Trump’s campaign legal team to testify before a special grand jury.
The AP reported that on Tuesday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis filed petitions with the judge overseeing the special grand jury as part of her investigation into what she alleges was “a multi-state, coordinated plan by the Trump Campaign to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere.”
Willis also filed petitions for five other potential witnesses to include lawyers Kenneth Chesebro, Cleta Mitchell, Jenna Ellis, John Eastman, and Jacki Pick Deason. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney signed off on the requests, which are similar to subpoenas, deeming them necessary to the investigation.
The special grand jury has been investigating whether Trump and others illegally tried to meddle in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
The investigation is separate from the congressional committee that has been examining the events surrounding the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as well as the Department of Justice’s own sprawling probe.
The escalation comes as Trump mulls announcing a third presidential run as soon as this summer as he seeks to deflect attention from the ongoing investigations and lock in support before a long list of other potential candidates, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, make their own moves.
According to the AP, Willis, who took this unusual step of requesting a special grand jury earlier this year, has confirmed that she and her team are looking into a January 2021 phone call in which Trump pushed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the votes needed for him to win the state. She also has said the team is looking at a November 2020 phone call between Graham and Raffensperger, the abrupt resignation of the U.S. attorney in Atlanta on Jan. 4, 2021, and comments made during December 2020 Georgia legislative committee hearings on the election.
In the petition submitted to the judge, Willis wrote that Graham actually made at least two telephone calls to Raffensperger and members of his staff in the weeks after the November 2020 election. During those calls, Graham asked about reexamining certain absentee ballots “in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump,” she wrote.
In the petition for Giuliani’s testimony, Willis identifies him as both a personal attorney for Trump and “a lead attorney for the Trump Campaign’s legal efforts seeking to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere.”
As part of those efforts, she wrote, he and others appeared at a state Senate subcommittee hearing at the Georgia Capitol on Dec. 3, 2020, and “provided testimony, additional witnesses, and documentary evidence purporting to demonstrate the existence of election fraud in multiple Georgia counties” during the November 2020 election. None of that has been substantiated.
Among the “evidence” Giuliani offered was a video recording of election workers at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, which he alleged showed them producing “suitcases” of unlawful ballots from unknown sources, outside the view of election poll watchers, Willis wrote.
Within 24 hours of the hearing, Raffensperger’s office had debunked the video and said that it had found that no voter fraud had taken place at the arena, Willis wrote. Nevertheless, Giuliani continued to make statements to the public and in subsequent legislative hearings claiming widespread voter fraud using that debunked video, she wrote.
“There is evidence that (Giuliani’s) appearance and testimony at the hearing was part of a multi-state, coordinated plan by the Trump Campaign to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere,” the petition says.
Giuliani’s attorney, Bob Costello, said he had no comment and that his client had not been served with any subpoena.
To compel the testimony of an out-of-state witness, a prosecutor in Georgia has to file a petition and then a judge has to sign a certificate approving the petition, said Danny Porter, a former longtime district attorney in Gwinnett County in Atlanta’s suburbs.
The next step is to deliver the petition to a prosecutor wherever the witness lives, and serve it to the witness, who is entitled to a hearing. If the person objects to going to Georgia to testify, they have to be able to show that either their testimony isn’t needed or that it would be an undue hardship for them, Porter said.
Special grand juries are impaneled in Georgia to investigate complex cases with large numbers of witnesses and potential logistical concerns. They can compel evidence and subpoena witnesses for questioning. Unlike regular grand juries, special grand juries can also subpoena the target of an investigation to appear before it.
When its investigation is complete, the special grand jury issues a final report and can recommend action. It’s then up to the district attorney to decide whether to ask a regular grand jury for an indictment.
It’s not clear exactly what charges Willis could ultimately choose to pursue against Trump or anyone else. In a letter she sent to top-ranking state officials last year, she said she was looking into “potential violations of Georgia law prohibiting the solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local government bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office and any involvement in violence or threats related to the election’s administration.”
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