“Hell, yes.” “100%.” Those were the replies of some Republican state legislators in Georgia to a last-ditch attempt by Donald Trump’s campaign to stop Joe Biden’s election win in the state, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, citing newly released congressional records.
The Trump campaign wanted the group to appoint presidential electors who would vote for Trump, not Joe Biden – even though he’d won the state’s 16 electoral votes, the first time a Democrat has done so since Bill Clinton in 1992.
The publication contacted the approximately 30 lawmakers who said they would participate in the effort, which was ultimately unsuccessful. Seventeen couldn’t be reached, or didn’t respond to a request for comment. But others appeared to deny they’d ever signed on.
“I do think there were some issues with the election. But that was not the way to go,” Republican state representative Kasey Carpenter told the Journal-Constitution.
You can read the rest of the story here.
Let’s say Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis does decide bring charges against Donald Trump based on the grand jury’s report. What would be the alleged crime? As the Guardian’s Carlisa N. Johnson reported last month, the answer could be racketeering:
An Atlanta prosecutor appears ready to use the same Georgia statute to prosecute Donald Trump that she used last year to charge dozens of gang members and well-known rappers who allegedly conspired to commit violent crime.
Fani Willis was elected Fulton county district attorney just days before the conclusion of the 2020 presidential election. But as she celebrated her promotion, Trump and his allies set in motion a flurry of unfounded claims of voter fraud in Georgia, the state long hailed as a Republican stronghold for local and national elections.
Willis assumed office on 1 January 2021, becoming the first Black woman in the position. The next day, according to reports, Trump called rad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, urging him to “find” the nearly 12,000 votes he needed to secure a victory and overturn the election results.
The following month, Willis launched an investigation into Trump’s interference in the state’s general election. Now, in a hearing on Tuesday, the special purpose grand jury and the presiding judge will decide whether to release to the public the final report and findings of the grand jury that was seated to investigate Trump and his allies.
Willis, who has not shied away from high-profile cases, has made headlines for her aggressive style of prosecution. Willis was a lead prosecutor in the 2013 prosecution of educators in Atlanta accused of inflating students’ scores on standardized tests. More recently, Willis brought a case against a supposed Georgia gang known as YSL, including charges against rappers Yung Thug and Gunna.
Got questions about the special grand jury’s report in Georgia? The Guardian’s Sam Levine has answers in this piece published just before a hearing in which a judge ultimately opted to allow its partial release:
A court hearing on Tuesday will mark one of the most significant developments in a Georgia investigation examining whether Donald Trump and allies committed a crime in their efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Here’s all you need to know about that hearing and what to expect next.
What exactly is happening on Tuesday?
Since May of last year, a special purpose grand jury in Fulton county, Georgia has been investigating whether Donald Trump committed a crime under state law when he tried to overturn the 2020 election by pressuring state officials to try and overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
The grand jury concluded its work earlier this month. On Tuesday, there will be a hearing to determine whether the grand jury’s report should be made public. The special grand jury – which consisted of 23 jurors and three alternates – has recommended its report be made public.
Why is this investigation such a big deal?
Trump and allies have yet to face any criminal consequences for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The Fulton county probe could be the first time that charges are filed against Trump and allies for those efforts. The US House committee that investigated the January 6 attacks also made a criminal referral to the justice department, which is also investigating Trump’s actions after the 2020 election.
Should Donald Trump face criminal charges?
That’s the big question the report authored by a special grand jury in Georgia’s Fulton county might answer. We won’t be seeing all of it today, but what’s released could shed light on what the jurors came to believe after spending months hearing from former Trump officials, state lawmakers and others with knowledge of his attempt to stop Joe Biden from carrying the state’s electoral votes.
The answer to that question could very well be no – at least in the eyes of the jurors. But they might recommend charges against other officials who appeared before them. Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani was, for instance, told that he was a target of the investigation, as was reportedly the state’s lieutenant governor Burt Jones and David Shafer, chair of the Georgia GOP.
But even if the jurors want to bring the hammer down, it’s not their decision to make. That’s up to Fani Willis, the district attorney for the Atlanta-area county, who will have to decide whether to accept their recommendations and move forward with prosecutions.
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Today, we may get a sense of which direction one of the many investigations into Donald Trump is heading, when parts of a special grand jury’s report into his attempt to undo Joe Biden’s 2020 election win in Georgia are made public. A judge earlier this week ordered the release of the document’s introduction, conclusion and a chapter on jurors’ concerns that some witnesses were lying, while withholding the rest, at least for now. Fani Willis, the district attorney in Georgia’s Atlanta-area Fulton county, is expected to use the report to determine whether to bring charges in the investigations – and against who. This blog will dig into the document as soon as it’s released.
Here’s what else is going on:
Joe Biden may as soon as today give a public address about the Chinese spy balloon and three UFOs shot down by American jets over North America, the Washington Post reports, in a response to pressure from lawmakers who want more transparency on the unusual events.
Barbara Lee, a progressive House Democrat known for her anti-war bona fides, has filed the paperwork to compete in the California Senate race, according to Politico.
Special counsel Jack Smith wants to hear from Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff for his final days in the White House, CNN reports.
Source: Elections - theguardian.com
