ATLANTA — Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is requesting a special grand jury to aid in her investigation of former President Donald Trump and his efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.
In a Thursday letter to Christopher S. Brasher, chief judge of Fulton County’s Superior Court, Willis said the move was needed because a “significant number of witnesses and prospective witnesses have refused to cooperate with the investigation absent a subpoena requiring their testimony.”
She cited comments Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger made during an October 2021 interview with NBC News’ Chuck Todd, in which he said, “If she wants to interview me, there’s a process for that.”
So-called special purpose grand juries are rarely used in Georgia but could be a valuable tool for Willis as she takes the extraordinary step of investigating the conduct of a president while he was in office.
Her probe, launched in February, is centered on the Jan. 2 phone call Trump placed to Raffensperger, in which he urged the Republican to “find” the votes to reverse Joe Biden’s win in Georgia in November 2020. But it could also include other actions from Trump’s allies who sowed doubts about the election results, including testimony his attorney Rudy Giuliani gave at a state legislative hearing.
Willis previously indicated that her office was probing potential violations of Georgia law prohibiting criminal solicitation to commit election fraud, intentional interference with the performance of election duties, conspiracy and racketeering, among others.
In her letter to Brasher, Willis said the DA’s office “has received information indicating a reasonable probability that the State of Georgia’s administration of elections in 2020, including the State’s election of the President of the United States, was subject to possible criminal disruptions.”
Special grand juries, which typically have 16 to 23 members, can’t issue indictments. But they can subpoena witnesses, compel the production of documents, inspect and enter into certain offices for the purposes of the investigation.
Willis said a special grand jury would be beneficial because jurors can be impaneled for as long as prosecutors need and would be focused on the one investigation. The veteran prosecutor said a special grand jury has “an investigatory focus appropriate to the complexity of the facts and circumstances involved.”
A regular Fulton County grand jury is seated for two months. Jurors typically hear hundreds of felony cases before their service ends.
The DA also requested that a Fulton County superior court judge be assigned to assist and supervise the special grand jury in carrying out its investigation and duties.
Willis’ request must be approved by a majority of the county’s superior court judges.
A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Willis recently told The Associated Press that a decision on whether to bring charges against Trump could come in the first half of 2022.
“We’re going to just get the facts, get the law, be very methodical, very patient and, in some extent, unemotional about this quest for justice,” she told the wire service earlier this month.
The move comes while Fulton prosecutors are trying to work their way through a backlog of some 11,000 criminal cases created by the pandemic and, as Willis has alleged, mismanagement by her predecessor Paul Howard.
Some critics believe Willis should focus on clearing those cases rather than devoting limited resources to probing the notoriously litigious former president.
To move forward with charges, prosecutors would need to prove that Trump knew his conduct was unlawful when he called Raffensperger and told him to “find” the 11,780 votes to overcome Biden’s win in Georgia.
While some legal experts believe the criminal intent, or mens rea, is there, other defense attorneys believe the case isn’t so cut and dried.
———
