Brian Kemp Must Testify in Trump Inquiry After Election

ATLANTA — A judge ruled on Monday that Gov. Brian P. Kemp of Georgia must appear before a special grand jury investigating election interference by former President Donald J. Trump, but will not be compelled to do so until after the Nov. 8 election.

Mr. Kemp, who is running for a second term this year, is one of a number of high-profile Republicans who have been fighting subpoenas that call upon them to testify in the sprawling case. Unlike many of those other Republicans, Mr. Kemp does not appear to have been involved in efforts after the November 2020 election to overturn Mr. Trump’s election loss in Georgia.

Indeed, Mr. Kemp resisted a personal entreaty from Mr. Trump, in December 2020, to convene the state Legislature in order to appoint pro-Trump electors from Georgia, even though Joseph R. Biden, a Democrat, had won the popular vote in the state.

Nevertheless, Mr. Kemp’s lawyers in recent days have tried to persuade Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court that under Georgia law, the sitting governor should not be subject to subpoenas. They argued, among other things, that the governor was protected by the doctrine of sovereign immunity, and that the subpoena had been issued “for improper political purposes” because his presence was being demanded before the November 2022 election. The investigation is being overseen by a Democrat, District Attorney Fani T. Willis of Fulton County, which encompasses most of Atlanta.

In a prepared statement on Monday, a spokesperson for Mr. Kemp said the court had “correctly paused” his testimony until after the election, saying the governor’s office would work “to ensure a full accounting of the governor’s limited role in the issues being investigated is available to the special grand jury.”

Ms. Willis, in a news conference on Monday, said: “Many people are unsuccessfully fighting our subpoenas. We will continue to fight to make sure that the grand jury and the public gets the truth.”

Ms. Willis also said that roughly 60 percent of the witnesses from whom she expected to hear had appeared before the special grand jury, and that its work would likely be finished by year’s end.

In his ruling on Monday, Judge McBurney declared that the sovereign immunity doctrine, which restricts lawsuits against the state, did not apply because the matter was not civil in nature. (The governor’s lawyers had argued that the special grand jury — which will issue a recommendation about possible criminal charges, but cannot itself hand up indictments — was carrying out what was technically a civil law function.)

The judge also noted that the governor’s lawyers tried to quash the subpoena after the breakdown of “weeks of tortured and tortuous negotiations” between Mr. Kemp’s team and the prosecutor over a voluntary interview. The judge determined that setting a date for Mr. Kemp’s testimony that was after Election Day would help insulate the appearance from politics.

“The Governor is in the midst of a re-election campaign and this criminal grand jury investigation should not be used by the District Attorney, the Governor’s opponent, or the Governor himself to influence the outcome of that election,” the judge wrote.

By declining to help overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, Mr. Kemp enraged Mr. Trump, who had endorsed him during his initial run for governor in 2018. This year, Mr. Trump backed an unsuccessful primary challenger, former U.S. Senator David Perdue.

Mr. Kemp is now facing a formidable Democratic candidate, Stacey Abrams, in the general election, and he finds himself in a delicate position politically as he seeks to consolidate support among pro- and anti-Trump forces in his party.

After Mr. Kemp filed a motion to avoid testifying, Ms. Abrams pounced. A video she shared asked, “Why isn’t Brian Kemp testifying in court?” She also told CNN that Mr. Kemp “has coasted on this notion that he is an anti-Trump moderate, but we know that he has described himself as a Trump conservative.”

A lawyer for Mr. Kemp declined to comment on the judge’s ruling Monday, as did a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office.

In a separate motion, the judge also denied efforts by Kenneth Chesebro, a Trump campaign lawyer, to avoid testifying before the special grand jury.

The grand jurors have already heard from Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has been identified as a target in the investigation, meaning that prosecutors believe he may eventually be indicted. Last week, prosecutors filed paperwork seeking to compel testimony from a number of other Trump associates, including the lawyer and conspiracy theorist Sidney Powell and Mark Meadows, a former White House chief of staff.