Georgia steps up investigation into threats against Trump grand jurors
Law enforcement officials in the US state of Georgia were on Friday intensifying their investigations into threats targeting members of the grand jury that indicted former president Donald Trump and 18 of his allies earlier this month, after private information about jurors was published online.
The Fulton county sheriff ’s office announced that it was “aware that personal information of members of the Fulton county grand jury is being shared on various platforms” and was working to track down the origins of the threats in Fulton county, where Atlanta is located, and other jurisdictions.
“We take this matter very seriously and are coordinating with our law enforcement partners to respond quickly to any credible threat and to ensure the safety of those individuals who carried out their civic duty,” the sheriff’s office said.
On Monday the Fulton county grand jury returned a 41-count indictment charging Trump and others with illegally conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia.
Media Matters, a left-leaning nonprofit that tracks conservative media, reported that the names, addresses, social media accounts and other information of the jurors were posted on farright message boards, a practice known as “doxxing”.
The organization said that users on a message board known to be a hotbed of QAnon conspiracy theorists referred to the list of jurors as a “hitlist”. Another user said they would “follow these people home and photograph their faces”. Another replied, “Based. Godspeed anons, you have all the long range rifles in the world.”
Users on another pro-Trump forum said the jurors “have signed their death warrant by falsely indicting President Trump”, according to NBC News.
Advance Democracy, a non-profit research organization that is also tracking social media posts against the jurors, said it was finding similar posts elsewhere on the internet, including on a fringe website that promotes violence. The organization told the Reuters news agency that it also found posts that included information about two NBC reporters who wrote about threats against the jurors, along with posts against the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis.
Willis, who is Black, has faced a wave of racist abuse online including from Trump, who, using a thinly veiled play on the N-word, wrote on Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform: “They never went after those that Rigged the Election … They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!”
“Statements by Trump and his allies continue to inspire violent language and threats online,” Dan Jones, president of Advance Democracy and a former FBI investigator and Senate intelligence committee staffer, told Reuters.
“The latest threats against jury members show you don’t have to be a politician or government official to be the target. It’s critical that the Fulton county sheriff’s office take this matter seriously. Equally important is that political leaders on the right denounce these threats and the statements that inspire them.”
In Georgia, it is standard practice to include the names of grand jurors in an indictment, though most federal and state court systems redact the names of jurors in public records. Releasing names is meant to, in part, provide defendants a chance to challenge the composition of a jury.
A lawyer told the Associated Press agency that a prosecutor in Georgia would need to get special permission from a judge to redact the names of jurors in an indictment. The Georgia supreme court in the past has said indictments that do not include the names of grand jurors are “defective”.
As Trump prepares for his fourth arraignment in court on criminal charges, authorities remain concerned over the rise in political violence across the country. This week, a Texas woman was arrested and charged with threatening to kill Tanya Chutkan, the federal judge overseeing the criminal election interference case against Trump in Washington DC related to the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.
The woman, identified as Abigail Jo Shry of Texas, also threatened to kill Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democratic congresswoman, according to court documents reviewed by the Associated Press.
Meanwhile, Trump himself has also made threats to authorities and his rivals amid his mounting legal woes, writing on social media: “If you go after me, I’m coming after you.”
The former president on Thursday said he was cancelling a scheduled press conference at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf course that was scheduled for 21 August, on the advice of his attorneys. Trump announced the press conference after the release of the indictment, saying he would provide new “evidence” for his widely debunked claims that election fraud cost him victory in Georgia, and ultimately nationally.
Trump and 18 co-defendants who were named in the Georgia indictment have until 25 August at noon ET to turn themselves in for arraignment.