The judge who oversaw the special grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 Georgia election loss is hearing arguments Tuesday on whether to release the grand jury’s report. The special grand jury did not have the authority to issue indictments, only to “make recommendations concerning criminal prosecution as it shall see fit,” but its report could include such recommendations to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on potential charges she might seek from a regular grand jury.
The hearing before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney was scheduled to start at 12 PM ET, but it’s not known how long he would take to make a decision on releasing the report. If he does release it, he might also have parts redacted. Specifically, the Associated Press reports, a grand jury handbook specifies that a grand jury “cannot include, in a report or general presentment, comments that charge or accuse identifiable person(s) of misconduct”; that kind of specificity is only allowed in charging documents. So the stuff we all most want to know would likely be redacted.
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Trump’s lawyers are insisting that Trump will be vindicated. Because he was never called in or subpoenaed by this grand jury, they say, “we can assume that the grand jury did their job and looked at the facts and the law, as we have, and concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump.”
No one else seems to be making that assumption, though, and the evidence the special grand jury considered included Trump’s notorious phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which Trump pressured Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn the election, as well as the resignation of Byung Pak as U.S. attorney in Atlanta, a resignation he told congressional investigators was because he had heard Trump was planning to fire him. Trump remains defiant and continues lying about that wildly incriminating call with Raffensperger:
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In addition to Trump’s own actions, the special grand jury looked at evidence on the slate of false electors attempting to throw the state to Trump, state legislators’ false allegations of election fraud, the computer forensics team hired by Trump allies that copied voting system software in one Georgia county, and the harassment campaign directed against Fulton County elections worker Ruby Freeman.
Of the possible charges Trump or others could face, MSNBC columnist Joyce Vance recently wrote, “Under Georgia law, it’s a crime to solicit another person to commit election fraud — for example, asking an election official to change votes or ‘find’ additional ballots. There is also a charge of conspiracy to commit election fraud. These crimes can be felonies or misdemeanors depending on the nature of the underlying conduct.”
For now, though, the question is whether McBurney will release the report and, if he does, what the parts of it made public will say. The timeline on that is not yet known, but McBurney surely knows people are paying attention.
We've got a special double-barreled, two-guest show for you on this week's episode of The Downballot! First up is Tiffany Muller, the president of End Citizens United, who discusses her group's efforts to roll back the corrupting effects of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision as we hit the ruling's 13th anniversary. Muller tells us about ECU's short- and long-term plans to enact serious campaign finance reform; how the organization has expanded into the broader voting rights arena in recent years; and research showing the surprising connection many voters drew between the GOP's attacks on democracy and their war against abortion rights.
Then we're joined by law professor Quinn Yeargain to gape slack-jawed at the astonishing setback Gov. Kathy Hochul experienced in the state capitol on Wednesday when a Democratic-led Senate committee rejected her conservative pick to lead New York's top court. Yeargain explains why Hochul's threatened lawsuit to force the legislature to hold a full floor vote on Hector LaSalle defies 250 years of precedent and what will happen if she eventually retreats—as she manifestly should.
