Georgia grand jury returns indictment
Panel has been investigating Trump role in 2020 election
ATLANTA – A grand jury in Georgia that has been investigating former President Donald Trump over his efforts to undo the 2020 election results in that state returned at least one indictment Monday, though it was not immediately clear against whom.
There was no immediate confirmation from Fulton County prosecutors about who was charged and for what, but the existence of indictments became apparent around 9 p.m., when the judge who for months has been presiding over the grand jury investigation was presented by clerk’s office officials with a set of papers in a courtroom packed with reporters anticipating news.
In the courthouse, cameras offered live feeds of the movements of the judge and other county officials, but no one offered clarity as to when an indictment might be released.
The grand jury heard from witnesses into the evening Monday in the election subversion investigation into Donald Trump, a long day of testimony punctuated by the mysterious and brief appearance on a county website of a list of criminal charges against the former president that prosecutors later disavowed.
Prosecutors in Fulton County presented evidence to the grand jury as they pushed toward a likely indictment, summoning the exlieutenant governor and other former state officials as witnesses.
But the process hit an unexpected snag in the middle of the day, when Reuters reported on a document listing criminal charges to be brought against Trump, including state racketeering counts, conspiracy to commit false statements and solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer.
Reuters, which later published a copy of the document, said the filing was taken down quickly. A spokesperson for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said the report of charges being filed was “inaccurate,” but declined to comment further. The Trump legal team rapidly jumped in to attack the integrity of the investigation.
The office of the Fulton County courts clerk later released a statement that seemed to only raise more questions, calling the posted document “fictitious,” but failing to explain how it got on the court’s website. The clerk’s office said documents without official case numbers “are not considered official filings and should not be treated as such.” But the document that appeared online did have a case number on it.
Asked about the “fictitious” document Monday evening, the courts clerk, Che Alexander, said: “I mean, I don’t know what else to say, like, grace ... I don’t know, I haven’t seen an indictment, right, so I don’t have anything.” On the question of whether the website had been hacked, she said, “I can’t speak to that.”
Trump and his allies, who have characterized the investigation as politically motivated, seized on the apparent error to claim that the process was rigged. Trump’s campaign aimed to fundraise off it, sending out an email with the since-deleted document embedded.
“The Grand Jury testimony has not even FINISHED – but it’s clear the District Attorney has already decided how this case will end,” Trump wrote in the email, which included links to give money to his campaign. “This is an absolute DISGRACE.”
Legal experts said it was likely a clerical error listing charges prosecutors were planning to ask the grand jury to vote on. Prosecutors draft indictments and present them to the grand jury, which ultimately decides whether to hand charges down.
“I think this tells us what they are planning to present to the grand jury, and the grand jury could say no,” said Clark Cunningham, a Georgia State University law professor. He said that while the error will give Trump’s legal team fodder to complain, “it will not scuttle the case.”