The Department of Justice used a grand jury subpoena to obtain CCTV security footage from the Atlanta, Georgia, arena where ballots were counted following the 2020 election, indicating that federal prosecutors are examining some of the same matters as the Fulton County, Georgia district attorney who may soon bring charges against former president Donald Trump and others in his orbit.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, prosecutors investigating Mr Trump’s efforts to remain in office against the will of voters despite losing the 2020 election issued a 31 May grand jury subpoena to the Georgia Secretary of State’s office seeking “any and all security video or security footage, or any other video of any kind, depicting or taken at or near, State Farm Arena, the Atlanta indoor sports venue that served as a polling place and ballot counting centre during the 2020 presidential election.
The election night goings-on at the arena, which serves as the home court for the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks, have been central to multiple avenues of civil and criminal litigation, including a grand jury probe supervised by Fani Willis, the Fulton County District Attorney.
Ms Willis is currently presenting evidence to a grand jury that could soon decide whether to bring state-level charges against Mr Trump or any of his allies for their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, in which the then-president became the first Republican to lose in the Peach State in three decades.
The footage has also played a role in civil litigation brought against a number of pro-Trump figures and entities by Ruby Freeman and Wandrea Moss, a pair of Georgia election workers who Mr Trump and his allies falsely accused of election fraud in the weeks following the 2020 balloting.
But the news of the federal subpoena, which comes just after Mr Trump revealed that he has received a letter informing him that he is a target of the federal probe into his actions during the run-up to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, is the first sign that Ms Willis and Special Counsel Jack Smith are trolling in the same waters.
It has long been known that Ms Willis has been looking into the false claims of fraud made by the ex-president and others in his circle, as well as his effort to convince Georgia Republicans to submit fraudulent electoral college certificates to the National Archives and to then-Vice President Mike Pence, who Mr Trump pressured to illegally hijack Congress’ role in counting electoral votes on the day of the attack.
Both the state and federal probes are expected to result in indictments against the ex-president, who is currently facing criminal charges in his former home state of New York as well as a separate federal indictment for allegedly unlawfully retaining national defence information in defiance of a grand jury subpoena.
