Prosecutor to seek indictment against Trump and allies
A Georgia prosecutor who has been investigating whether former President Donald Trump and his allies illegally sought to overturn the state’s 2020 election results is expected to seek an indictment from a grand jury next week. This is the clearest indication yet that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will lay out her case to the jury after more than two years of probing.
Two witnesses who previously received subpoenas confirmed on Saturday that they have been told to appear before a grand jury in Atlanta on Tuesday. They are Geoff Duncan, the state’s former lieutenant governor, and George Chidi, an independent journalist. Both are Republicans who have criticized Trump’s false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
“I’ll certainly answer whatever questions are put in front of me,” Duncan told CNN. Chidi said in a post on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, that he had also been instructed to appear on Tuesday.
Trump faces multiple charges in other states
If Trump is charged in Georgia, it would mark his fourth indictment in less than five months, and the second to arise from his efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. He was charged earlier this month in Washington federal court with orchestrating a multistate conspiracy to reverse the election results. Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought the Washington case, has also charged Trump separately in Florida with illegally retaining classified documents after leaving office and with obstruction of justice.
Manhattan prosecutors, meanwhile, indicted Trump this spring for falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to a porn star who says she had a sexual encounter with Trump years ago.
Trump remains the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, despite his legal woes. He has portrayed all the investigations as part of a coordinated effort by Democrats to undermine his candidacy. In a post on his Truth Social site on Saturday, Trump again called the Georgia investigation a “witch hunt.”
Willis to use broad racketeering statute
Willis is expected to charge multiple people, possibly by using the state’s broad racketeering statute. Her investigation began soon after Trump made a phone call to the state’s top election official, Republican Brad Raffensperger, and urged him to “find” enough votes to alter the outcome.
In addition to efforts to pressure Georgia officials, Willis has examined a breach of election machines in a rural county and a plot to use fake electors in a bid to capture the state’s electoral votes for Trump rather than Biden.
Raffensperger has said he will cooperate with Willis’s investigation and provide any evidence he has. He has also defended the integrity of Georgia’s election system and rejected Trump’s baseless claims of fraud.
Georgia election results certified twice
Georgia was one of the key battleground states that Biden won by a narrow margin of about 12,000 votes out of nearly 5 million cast. The state certified its results twice after conducting a hand recount and an audit of the ballots.
Trump and his allies filed several lawsuits challenging the results, but none of them succeeded in overturning the outcome. They also pressured state lawmakers and officials to intervene and overturn the will of the voters, but they refused to do so.
The Georgia grand jury is expected to hear evidence from Willis and her team next week and decide whether there is probable cause to issue an indictment. If an indictment is issued, it will be made public and the defendants will be arraigned in court.
