Donald Trump responded to interviews given by the foreperson of the Georgia grand jury which investigated his election subversion attempts by ridiculing the woman and claiming to be the victim of his political enemies.
“This Georgia case is ridiculous,” the former president wrote on his Truth Social platform, claiming “a strictly political continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time”.
It has been widely reported that lawyers for possible Republican targets in the investigation are preparing to seek dismissal of the case based on the foreperson’s comments.
Running for the Republican presidential nomination, Trump remains in wide-ranging legal jeopardy over election subversion including inciting the January 6 attack on Congress, his financial affairs including a hush money payment to a porn star, the retention of classified documents and an accusation of rape, which he denies.
The district attorney of Fulton county, Fani Willis, requested the grand jury to investigate Trump’s attempts to overturn his 2020 defeat in Georgia by Joe Biden, the first Republican loss there in a presidential election since 1992.
Portions of the grand jury report have been released but indictments have not yet followed.
The jury foreperson, Emily Kohrs, was authorized to speak to the media but not to discuss deliberations.
Many observers said she went too far, dropping broad hints about indictments and discussing interactions with witnesses.
Speaking to CNN, she said it would be a “good assumption” that more than a dozen people would be indicted.
Kohrs, 30, told the New York Times it was “not rocket science” to work out if Trump indictments were among those recommended.
Speaking to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and told Trump had claimed “total exoneration” through the jury’s report, Kohrs “rolled her eyes” and “burst out laughing”.
Trump wrote: “Now you have an extremely energetic young woman, the (get this!) ‘foreperson’ of the racist DA’s special grand jury, going around and doing a media tour revealing, incredibly, the grand jury’s inner workings and thoughts.”
Willis, a Democrat, is African American. Claiming she was presiding over “an illegal kangaroo court”, Trump also claimed to have done nothing in Georgia but make “two perfect phone calls”.
The grand jury investigated election subversion efforts including a call to the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, in which Trump asked the Republican elections official to “find” enough votes for him to beat Biden. Alternate elector schemes and state-house machinations were also scutinised.
On Wednesday, amid reports that lawyers were preparing to seek dismissal of the case because of Kohrs’ comments in the media, observers including the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman pointed out that Kohrs led a fact-finding grand jury, meaning a separate panel would deal with any indictments.
But Haberman also told CNN: “I’ve covered courts on and off for the last 20 years, more than that. I’ve never heard of a grand jury foreperson speaking this way … I’ve never seen anything like it.
“If I’m the prosecutor, I’m not sure that I want this media tour taking place, because I’m confident that Donald Trump’s lawyers are going to use this, just based on what I [am] hearing … to try to argue that this is prejudicial in terms of what she is saying.”
