Special Ga. grand jury looming in Trump election meddling inquiry
As the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot fights to extract testimony and documents from Donald Trump’s White House, an Atlanta district attorney is moving toward convening a special grand jury in her criminal investigation of election interference by the former president and his allies, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deliberations.
The prosecutor, Fani Willis of Fulton County, opened her inquiry in February, and her office has been consulting with the House committee, whose evidence could be of considerable value to her investigation. But her progress has been slowed in part by delays in the panel’s fact gathering. By convening a grand jury dedicated solely to the allegations of election tampering, Willis, a Democrat, would be indicating that her own investigation is ramping up.
Her inquiry is seen by legal experts as potentially perilous for the former president, given the myriad interactions he and his allies had with Georgia officials, most notably Trump’s January call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, urging him to “find 11,780 votes” — enough to reverse the state’s election result. The Georgia case is one of two active criminal investigations known to touch on the former president and his circle; the other is the examination of his financial dealings by the Manhattan district attorney.
Willis’ investigation is unfolding in a state that remains center stage in the nation’s partisan warfare over the vote.
The Biden Justice Department has sued Georgia over a highly restrictive voting law passed by the Republican-led Legislature, arguing that it discriminates against Black voters. At the same time, Trump is aggressively seeking to reshape the state’s political landscape by ousting Republicans whom he considers unwilling to do his bidding or to adopt his false claims of election fraud. He is supporting a challenger to Raffensperger in next year’s primary and has been courting possible candidates to run against the Republican governor, Brian Kemp. One Trump ally, former Sen. David Perdue, is weighing such a run; another, former football star Herschel Walker, is eyeing a Senate bid. (A new governor would not have direct power to pardon, which in Georgia is delegated to a state board.)
Instead of impaneling a special grand jury, Willis could submit evidence to one of two grand juries currently sitting in Fulton County, a longtime Democratic stronghold that encompasses much of Atlanta. But the county has a vast backlog of more than 10,000 potential criminal cases that have yet to be considered by a grand jury — a result of logistical complications from the coronavirus pandemic and, Willis has argued, inaction by her predecessor, Paul Howard, whom she replaced in January.
By contrast, a special grand jury, which by Georgia statute would include 16-23 members, could focus solely on the potential case against Trump and his allies. Willis is likely to soon take the step, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deliberations, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the decision is not final. Although such a jury could issue subpoenas, Willis would need to return to a regular grand jury to seek criminal indictments.
Willis’ office declined to comment; earlier this year, in an interview with The New York Times, she said, “Anything that is relevant to attempts to interfere with the Georgia election will be subject to review.”
Aides to Trump did not respond to requests for comment; in February, a spokesperson called the Fulton County inquiry “the Democrats’ latest attempt to score political points by continuing their witch hunt against President Trump.”
Raffensperger made his view of Trump’s election meddling clear in a book released this month, on Election Day: “For the office of the secretary of state to ‘recalculate’ would mean we would somehow have to fudge the numbers. The president was asking me to do something that I knew was wrong, and I was not going to do that,” he wrote.
Of Trump’s call, Raffensperger wrote, “I felt then — and still believe today — that this was a threat.”
A 114-page analysis of potential issues in the case was released last month by the Brookings Institution, with authors including Donald Ayer, a deputy attorney general during the George H.W. Bush administration, and Norman Eisen, who was a special counsel to President Barack Obama. The report concluded that Trump’s post-election conduct in Georgia put him “at substantial risk of possible state charges,” including racketeering, election fraud solicitation, intentional interference with performance of election duties and conspiracy to commit election fraud.
Willis has said a racketeering charge is on the table. Such cases are often associated with prosecutions of mob bosses, using the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO, and Georgia has its own state version of the law.