The Prediction of the 2020 Supreme Court Final State Report, as Revealed by a Law Professor at the Georgia State University Law School
Clark D. Cunningham, a law professor at Georgia State University, said that the Supreme Court’s order gives Mr. Graham “the opportunity to continue a strategy of delay by objecting to specific questions from the grand jury and seeking a court ruling.”
However, he added, those objections may have to be hashed out in open court — a risk for the senator, Mr. Cunningham said, “because it may disclose to public view both the topics the grand jury is exploring and his unwillingness to answer such questions.”
The special grand jury “unanimously” concluded that there wasn’t widespread voter fraud in Georgia in 2020, rejecting Trump’s conspiracy theories after hearing “extensive testimony” from election officials, poll workers and other experts.
The information already in the public realm is damning. On Jan. 2, 2021, Trump spoke with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and told him to “find” the votes he needed to win. He said that Raffensperger could be charged with criminal offenses if he did not do Trump’s bidding. Trump said on the phone that the ballots were corrupt. You know what they did and you’re not reporting it so it’s more illegal for you than it is for them. That is a criminal offense. You can not allow that to happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. That is a big risk.
A number of high-profile allies of Mr. Trump have waged battles in courtrooms around the nation, arguing that they shouldn’t have to. So far, their track record has been mixed.
On the Special Grand Jury Report on the 2020 Midterm Election: Comments on Witnesses Lying Under Oath, as Released Thursday
The judge ordered the limited release earlier this week, and wrote that the grand jury panel had about witnesses lying under oath, and so would be made public.
There are questions as to whether the portions include any new information that could exonerate Trump or if the special grand jury concluded that the president committed no crimes.
Trump lost to Joe Biden in Georgia by nearly 12,000 votes in 2020. The former president insists that there was no problem with his activities in the election.
Willis designated a number of people as targets of her probe last year, including 16 Georgia Republicans who served as pro-Trump electors in 2020 and Rudy Giuliani, who was working as a lawyer for Trump.
Cunningham stated to CNN that the conduct mentioned was either done on Donald Trump’s behalf or directly by him.
“That would tell us that this cross section of citizens, having spent nine months working hard at this, has concluded that at least some of what was done on behalf of the former president to overturn the election results was a crime,” he said. That is terrifically significant.
Parts of the special grand jury report released Thursday shed light on how the panel – which had 26 members, including three alternates – operated behind closed doors over the past several months.
The pages released Thursday do not name any witnesses alongside that recommendation and do not provide any other details about the witness testimony the special grand jury heard.
An Investigation of the Fulton County Election Commission: Summary of the Report and Recommendations for Possible Indictments of the Ex-President
The final report will likely include the summary of the panel’s investigative work, as well as any recommendations for indictments and alleged conduct that led the panel to its conclusions.
One of the potentially most significant excerpts of the report deals with the grand jury’s unanimous conclusion that there was no evidence of voter fraud in Georgia that could have altered the result of an election won by Biden by just under 12,000 votes.
One potential defense if Trump is charged is that the ex-president fully believed there was election fraud in Georgia and elsewhere, and that he was seeking to protect the integrity of an election. Still, an election audit in Georgia that confirmed Biden’s win and the actions of Republican election officials who also said there was insufficient fraud to overturn the result contribute to considerable reasonable doubt that Trump can genuinely have believed he won. The conclusion of the grand jury further supports that impression.
Perjury “may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it,” according to portions of the report disclosed Thursday. “The Grand Jury recommends that the District Attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling.”
It is still not known if the same thing will be concluded and if there is evidence enough to win a case or make indictments. But the answer may be coming soon.
Will Trump be indicted is the most pressing question in the Fulton County investigation. The excerpts of the report came out on Thursday, but they did not make a difference to answering the question. Trump’s name – or the name of any subject of the investigation or witness – wasn’t mentioned.
The implications of Willis’ decisions couldn’t be higher. The 2024 presidential campaign is already kicking into gear, and Willis’ decision on charging Trump could potentially scramble the Republican primary field.
“The president participated in two perfect phone calls regarding election integrity in Georgia, which he is entitled to do – in fact, as president, it was President Trump’s Constitutional duty to ensure election safety, security, and integrity,” the ex-president said in his statement.
The Grand Jury and the 2016 Fulton County Election: Finding More than 10,780 Votes Because We Won the State During the 2020 Election
The grand jury heard testimony from investigators and input from the team of assistant district attorneys who outlined for the grand jury the applicable statutes and procedures.
The majority of the grand jury used their collective best efforts, however, to attend every session, listen to every witness, and attempt to understand the facts as presented and explained.
Totaling just nine pages – three of which contained no substantive information – the portions released Thursday were short and didn’t provide extensive information on the investigation’s findings.
Editor’s Note: Jill Filipovic is a journalist based in New York and author of the book “OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind.” She can follow her on social media. This commentary was written by her alone. View more opinion on CNN.
It’s time for former President Donald Trump and his associates to face the consequences of creating and perpetuating the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. And it’s time for his supporters to re-enter the reality-based community and see the truth.
He said that you cannot let it happen and that you are letting it happen. You know, I mean, I’m notifying you that you’re letting it happen. So look. All I want to do is this. I want to find more than 10,780 votes because we won the state.
The Trump campaign cooked up a scheme in which fake Electoral College delegates would vote for Trump because they believed he would win the election.
The conclusion seems unlikely to change the minds of Trump’s hardcore base. It could have an impact on a Republican Party that is split over everything from their anti-abortion strategy to who should lead their ticket. Many Republicans want to move beyond Trump, with his unfiltered bigotry and never-ending drama and posse of hucksters and reprobates. But many of those same Republicans fear the stubborn and loud Trump base.
They should look at the book of the special grand jury. It seems highly unlikely that every member of this jury was a liberal Democrat. While Biden won 76.2% of the vote in Fulton County in 2020, there were surely Trump supporters and people who usually vote for Republicans among the jurors. The voters were able to put aside their partisan interests, recognize the task at hand, and still act according to the rules. They made recommendations based on the information they heard and not on partisan interests. They weren’t tasked with determining guilt or innocence, but rather with assessing whether the evidence before them supported bringing any criminal charges.
They were asked to assess whether it’s possible that a former president and his allies had leveraged an attack on American democracy, or whether that president was telling the truth when he said the election was stolen.
They found that, contrary to the former president’s claims, there was no evidence of widespread fraud undermining the results of the election, and that at least some criminal charges should be brought.
That’s a much nobler conclusion than the one we’ve seen from members of the GOP, many of whom have largely opposed any efforts to determine responsibility for election-fraud lies, and have instead often doubled down on those lies.
The January 6 attack on the US Capitol left several dead, but no one wants to know what exactly happened or how.
If average people are selected to work on a special grand jury, why not ask them if they broke the law, or if the election was free and fair?
Now, any criminal charges are in the hands of prosecutors. The future of the Republican Party is in its own hands. They can tell the truth, get accountability, and try to regain integrity. Or they can move forward with the man who lost his job.
It is not clear whether any indictments for perjury or anything else would involve Trump or those close to him. The ex-president did not appear before the grand jury. Trump maintains that he did nothing wrong.
Notable figures that were heard from by the grand jury include Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and former White House chief of staff, MarkMeadows. The Republican senator from South Carolina told CNN on Thursday that he had confidence in his testimony.
Some legal analysts have concluded that the atmospherics of the case and the signals being sent by Willis mean that some indictments are likely – though of course charges do not mean that someone will be convicted at trial.
“I am convinced there will be indictments, either for perjury or for other crimes,” Thomas Dupree, a former deputy assistant attorney general in ex-President George W. Bush’s administration, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Thursday.
Norm Eisen, a former diplomat and legal and ethics expert, told CNN on Thursday that the conclusion was a possibly important building block in any case against Trump. The finding “goes right to the core of what Donald Trump has been claiming happened in Georgia. It repudiates him,” Eisen said on CNN “Newsroom”
“It also establishes a basis for bringing charges – you couldn’t bring charges without this kind of a conclusion – on solicitation of election fraud. This is another nail in the coffin that was already full of them.”
In order to avoid being excited by the events in Georgia, former Bush administration attorney general, Albert Gonzalez cautioned that it would be wrong to over-hype them.
Trump’s call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was far from perfect, of course, as he pressured the Republican official to change the vote counts for the election to allow him to overtake Biden in the key swing state.
A Brookings Institution report into the Fulton County criminal investigation cites Georgia law in relation to election fraud, which says a felony has been committed if someone “solicits, requests, commands, importunes, or otherwise attempts to cause the other person to engage in such conduct.” The report suggests that Trump committed at least several acts between Election Day of 2020 and January 6, 2021, when Congress decided not to certify the election.