Ajit Karn
Washington: On Thursday, a US judge released parts of a report from a special grand jury that looked into whether Donald Trump might try to influence the 2020 election. The report said that witnesses may have lied under oath.
Prosecutors in Georgia have spent two years looking into whether Trump and his supporters did anything wrong to try to change the fact that he lost by less than 12,000 votes in the southern state to Joe Biden.
“A majority of the grand jury thinks that one or more witnesses who testified before it may have lied,” the jurors said. They also said that Trump’s claims of widespread fraud in the election were not backed up by any evidence.
“The grand jury recommends that, when the evidence is strong, the district attorney file the right charges for these kinds of crimes.”
Some of Trump’s closest allies, like his fourth chief of staff Mark Meadows, his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, testified in front of the panel of 23 jurors, which cannot bring charges.
Judge Robert McBurney of the Fulton County Superior Court said on Monday that the report’s introduction, conclusion, and the part about possible perjury should all be made public.
For now, the full list of people it wants to charge, including their names, is being kept secret because some of them may not have had a chance to testify before the grand jury yet.
After giving the panel’s findings to one of the criminal grand juries that meet regularly in Fulton County, which may have already happened, Democratic District Attorney Fani Willis will decide whether or not to file charges.
The panel looked into Trump’s famous phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on January 2, 2021, when he asked election officials to “find” the 11,780 votes that would put him one vote ahead of Biden.
It also looked into what top Trump supporters were doing to get Republican activists to pose as presidential “electors” at the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta in December 2020 and sign papers saying Trump had won the state’s election when he hadn’t.
Other lines of inquiry included claims that false claims of election fraud were made to state lawmakers, illegal attempts were made to get into voting machines, and Georgia election workers were threatened and harassed.
Legal experts think that Trump could be charged under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law, which would let prosecutors say that Trump and his allies were part of a criminal enterprise.
Trump has called the investigation a “witch hunt” many times. It is one of several investigations into alleged actions by the former president and his top aides after he lost the election.
In its final report last year, a congressional committee that looked into the 2021 attack on the US Capitol said that Trump’s team was behind a multi-step plan to stay in power even though he lost the election.
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A semi-independent prosecutor named by Attorney General Merrick Garland has sent subpoenas to Trump administration officials and election officials in Georgia and other swing states as part of a criminal investigation into the same effort.
Mike Pence, who is Trump’s vice president, was one of the people who got a summons, and CNN said Thursday that Meadows was also called in January.
