Prosecutor to begin presenting election case to Ga. grand jury
ATLANTA — An Atlanta-area prosecutor investigating whether former president Donald Trump and his associates broke the law when they sought to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia is expected to begin presenting her case before a grand jury early next week.
Former Georgia lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan, who was subpoenaed as a potential witness, said on CNN Saturday that he will give closed-door testimony on Tuesday to a grand jury after he was subpoenaed to testify at the Fulton County Courthouse.
“I will certainly answer any questions put in front of me,” Duncan said in the CNN interview. “For me, this is a story that I think it’s important for Republicans to hear and Americans to hear. Let’s hear the truth and nothing but the truth about Donald Trump’s actions and the surrounding cast of characters around him.”
George Chidi, an independent journalist who was also subpoenaed, said on X, the platform that had been known as Twitter, that he had also been given notice to appear before the grand jury on Tuesday.
It marks the first official confirmation that Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis is finally moving to seek charges more than two years after she first launched her investigation into the efforts Trump and allies undertook to reverse Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia.
A spokesman for Willis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The high-profile investigation is widely expected to result in multiple charges for several defendants — including Trump, who was indicted earlier this month in a separate federal case brought by special counsel Jack Smith alleging Trump schemed and conspired to undermine the legitimacy of the 2020 election to remain in power.
Duncan, a Republican, is one of four known witnesses subpoenaed to appear in the Fulton County case — though a summons does not necessarily guarantee testimony. Former Georgia state senator Jen Jordan and former state representative Bee Nguyen, both Democrats, have also publicly acknowledged receiving subpoenas.
Duncan had been a longtime Trump supporter when he publicly broke with the then-president in the chaotic aftermath of the 2020 election, publicly criticizing Trump and his allies for the “mountains of misinformation” they voiced about Georgia’s election results. Duncan, who was head of the state Senate in late 2020, publicly clashed with several GOP state lawmakers and vocal allies of Trump who pushed efforts to overturn Biden’s win in the state and criticized hearings in which Rudy Giuliani, a former mayor of New York, pushed debunked claims of widespread election fraud.
Duncan, who did not seek reelection in 2022, fought a subpoena last year to appear before a special purpose grand jury impaneled to investigate the case but said last week he would willingly testify and “share the facts as I know them around this investigation.”
Jordan and Nguyen attended the legislative hearings where Giuliani and other Trump associates peddled baseless conspiracy theories about the Georgia vote — with Nguyen challenging many of those claims in real time. Both testified last year before the special grand jury.
Another subpoena went to Chidi, an Atlanta independent journalist, who stumbled upon a meeting in December 2020 at the Georgia Capitol of 16 Republicans who had gathered to cast fraudulent Electoral College votes declaring Trump as the victor in Georgia even though Biden had already been certified as the winner.
Chidi wrote in The Intercept that he was falsely told it was an “education meeting” and was kicked out — a detail that has drawn the attention of Willis and prosecutors investigating the so-called “fake” elector scheme.
Willis has strongly hinted for months that she will seek multiple indictments in the case, using Georgia’s expansive antiracketeering statutes that allow prosecutors not only to charge in-state wrongdoing but to use activities in other states to prove criminal intent in Georgia. In court filings, Willis has described her probe as an investigation of “multistate, coordinated efforts to influence the results of the November 2020 elections in Georgia and elsewhere.”
At least 18 people were informed by prosecutors last year they were targets of the investigation. That list includes Giuliani, who acted as Trump’s personal attorney after the election, and several Georgia Republicans who served as alternate Trump electors — though some have since been granted immunity.
But Willis’s scope is suspected to be larger than that. Georgia law does not require individuals to be formally notified they are targets of an investigation.
In addition to the alternate electors, Fulton County prosecutors are believed to be examining the false statements made by Giuliani and other Trump allies during the Georgia legislative hearings; the harassment of election workers, including Fulton County poll workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss; and the breach of voting equipment in Coffee County, Ga., as part of a Trumpled effort to undermine Georgia’s 2020 vote.
Willis previously indicated she would announce a charging decision during a three-week window in August, which ends Friday. Security has intensified in recent weeks around the courthouse, where the building is blocked by barriers and streets have been closed.
If charged in Georgia, it would be the fourth time since March that Trump has been criminally indicted.