Rudy Giuliani, the former personal attorney to Donald Trump, is meeting with the Georgia grand jury that could recommend criminal charges against him for participating in the ex-president’s scheme to overturn the 2020 election in the Peach State.
Mr Giuliani, who travelled to Atlanta on Wednesday after he was ordered to testify by a judge who had rejected his claims that he was unable to travel on account of a medical condition, was reported to have arrived at the Fulton County courthouse around 8.30am. He was accompanied by his own attorney, Robert Costello, and Vernon Jones, a former congressional candidate who has endorsed Mr Trump’s false claims regarding the conduct of the 2020 election.
Asked what he expected to say to grand jurors, Mr Giuliani told reporters: “They’ll ask the questions and we’ll see”.
The ex-New York City mayor, whose licenses to practice law in New York and Washington, DC, have been suspended on account of the repeated false statements he made while representing Mr Trump in the weeks following the 2020 election, is widely expected to assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Earlier this week, Fulton County prosecutors informed him that he is a target of the grand jury probe, which is focused on determining whether Mr Trump or any of his allies broke Georgia election laws by pressuring election officials, lawmakers, and even the state’s governor to reject 2020 election results after Mr Trump became the first Republican to lose in Georgia since Bill Clinton carried the state in 1992.
Mr Giuliani was originally ordered to appear before the grand jury — which was convened earlier this year at the request of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis — on 9 August, but the former Trump lawyer initially resisted appearing and told prosecutors he was unable to travel because of a recent cardiac procedure.
Prosecutors responded by pointing out that he his public social media posts showed that he had travelled away from his New York home during the time he claimed to be unable to do so, at which point his attorneys said he had been told not to travel by air.
In response, lawyers with the Fulton County District Attorney said they had obtained evidence that the ex-Trump attorney “purchased multiple airline tickets with cash, including tickets to Rome, Italy and Zurich, Switzerland, for travel dates … after [his] medical procedure”.
In response to Mr Giuliani’s second motion to delay his grand jury appearance, lawyers with the Fulton County District Attorney said they had obtained evidence that the ex-Trump attorney “purchased multiple airline tickets with cash, including tickets to Rome, lly, and Zurich, Switzerland, for travel dates … after [his] medical procedure”.
Mr Giuliani is not the only Trump associate who Fulton County prosecutors have asked to testify regarding what they describe as “a multistate, coordinated plan by the Trump campaign to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere”.
On Monday, a federal judge in South Carolina ordered Senator Lindsey Graham to give evidence before the grand jury, rejecting Mr Graham’s arguments that the US Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause precluded him having to tell grand jurors about his work on Mr Trump’s behalf.
Mr Graham has vowed to appeal the ruling, and in a statement decried what he called “the weaponization of the law”.
Two other attorneys who once represented the ex-president in his push to reject the will of voters, Jenna Ellis and John Eastman, are currently fighting attempts by Ms Willis’ office to compel their testimony. Ms Ellis has been ordered by a judge in her home state of Colorado to appear on 25 August.
