Such was Donald Trump’s troubled state of mind after the 2020 election that he would have believed aliens had stolen his ballots if anyone had told him so, a leading Republican senator said, according to a member of the special grand jury in the investigation of the former president’s attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in Georgia.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, an unnamed juror described Senator Lindsey Graham, from South Carolina and a close Trump ally, as saying: “During that time, if somebody had told Trump that aliens came down and stole Trump ballots … Trump would’ve believed it.”
Running for the Republican nomination again, Trump continues to push the lie that his conclusive defeat was the result of electoral fraud.
The Atlanta paper interviewed five of the 23 members of the Fulton county grand jury, whose report was made partially public last month. The jury recommended indictments. Against whom is not known.
In Georgia, Trump and his allies, including Graham, pressed state officials to investigate or overturn Biden’s narrow win.
The Journal-Constitution said Emily Kohrs, the jury foreperson who spoke to the media last month, was not among jurors it spoke to.
Lawyers for Trump have tried to use Kohrs’ comments to have the case dismissed.
One juror said criticism of Kohrs led to the group being “portrayed as not serious. That really bothered me because that’s not how I felt. I took it very seriously.”
Another said: “One of the most important things we’ll be a part of in our life was this eight-month process that we did … [it was] incredibly important to get it right.”
Describing evidence not previously public, jurors described a call in which Trump tried to persuade the state House speaker, David Ralston, to convene a special session and overturn Biden’s win.
Ralston, who died in November, “basically cut the president off”, the juror said.
“He said, ‘I will do everything in my power that I think is appropriate’ … He just basically took the wind out of the sails. ‘Well, thank you,’ you know, is all the president could say.”
The jurors heard from poll workers targeted by Trump and threatened by his supporters.
“I was pretty emotional throughout the whole thing,” one juror said. “I wouldn’t cry in front of any of the witnesses, but when I would get in my car, I was like, I just left that and I have to just go do my job now? … I just know things that are hard to know.”
Witnesses who invoked their fifth-amendment right against self-incrimination – reported to have included the former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani – proved frustrating.
“When people would take the fifth over and over, we could kind of go, ‘Ugh,’” a juror said. “Not because we’re like, ‘Oh my gosh you’re guilty, whatever.’ It was like, ‘We’re going to be here all day.’”
One juror said prosecutors used video of speeches, interviews or other testimony if a witness did not answer.
Trump did not appear. One juror said: “With the benefit of hindsight, we should have sent a voluntary invitation.”
The juror said his mind had been changed by moves to indict Trump in New York, over a hush money payment to a porn star.
The Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, is now deciding whether to convene another grand jury to issue indictments. The full report remains under wraps.
One juror said: “A lot’s gonna come out sooner or later. And it’s gonna be massive. It’s gonna be massive.”
