Asked if the grand jury she led recommended indicting Donald Trump over his election subversion in Georgia, the foreperson of the jury said: “You’re not going to be shocked. It’s not rocket science.”

She also said sitting on the jury was “a big freaking deal”.

Emily Kohrs, 30, spoke to the New York Times and outlets including the Associated Press and NBC News on Tuesday. She was authorised to speak but not to discuss details of the grand jury report, most of which remains secret after a judge disclosed portions last week.

Those portions showed jurors saw possible evidence of perjury by “one or more witnesses”. Trump did not testify. His personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who advanced Trump’s lie about voter fraud in his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, was among those who did.

The grand jury was requested by Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney. Speaking to the AP, Kohrs described how, last May, jurors were led into a garage beneath an Atlanta courthouse, where officers with guns waited. Ushered into vans with heavily tinted windows, jurors were driven to their cars under police escort.

“That was the first indication that this was a big freaking deal,” Kohrs said.

Kohrs found herself at the center of one of the most significant legal proceedings in US history. She would become foreperson of the panel investigating whether the then president and associates illegally meddled in Georgia election results.

The case is one of Trump’s most glaring legal vulnerabilities as he mounts a third presidential run, in part because he was recorded asking officials to “find 11,780 votes” and overturn Biden’s win.

Jurors heard from 75 witnesses, from prominent Trump allies to local election workers. A judge, Robert McBurney, advised jurors on what they could and could not share publicly. Kohrs provided insight into a process typically cloaked in secrecy.

She told the Times Giuliani, who was mayor of New York at the time of the 9/11 attacks, when she was 11, was “almost like a myth figure in my head”, leaving her “intimidated” in his presence.

She told NBC the list of recommended indictments was “not short”, involving more than a dozen people, and that Trump “might” be among them.

She told the Times the report would not offer “some giant plot twist. You probably have a fair idea of what may be in there. I’m trying very hard to say that delicately”.

Her remarks met with criticism in some quarters.

Elie Honig, a federal prosecutor turned CNN analyst, said: “This is a very serious prospect. Indicting any person, you’re talking about potentially taking away that person’s liberty. We’re talking about potentially [indicting] a former president for the first time … she does not seem to be taking that very seriously.”

Trump’s lawyers might seek to dismiss any indictment based on grand jury impropriety, Honig said.

Trump was the first Republican to lose Georgia since George HW Bush lost to Bill Clinton in 1992. Attempts to overturn Trump’s defeat included the famous call to Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state, in which he asked his fellow Republican to “find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have” to get to win.

Kohrs told the Times the jury “definitely started with the first phone call, the call to Secretary Raffensperger that was so publicised”.

She told the AP Raffensperger was “a really geeky kind of funny”. She said the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, who fought not to testify, joked with jurors while Brian Kemp, the Republican governor of Georgia, seemed unhappy to be there.

Looking to other parts of Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat, she said the jury “definitely talked about the alternate electors a fair amount” and “talked a lot about December and things that happened in the Georgia legislature”.

Kohrs told the AP she was fascinated by an explainer by a former Dominion Voting Systems executive. She said the jury studied the “concept of vote fraud in Georgia”, finding “unanimously that there was no evidence of vote fraud in Fulton county in the 2020 election”, which they “wanted to make sure we put in” the final report, “because somehow that’s still a question”.

Trump and his supporters still claim the 2020 election was stolen.

Kohrs sketched witnesses. When jurors’ notes were taken for shredding, she managed to salvage two sketches, of Graham and Marc Short, who was chief of staff to former vice-president Mike Pence, because there were no notes on those pages.

Kohrs said she enjoyed learning about the White House from Cassidy Hutchinson, who was much more forthcoming than the former chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Several witnesses have immunity deals. Trump’s attorneys have said he was not asked to testify. Kohrs said the jury didn’t think he would offer meaningful testimony.

“Trump was not a battle we picked to fight,” she said.

Kohrs told the AP she didn’t vote in 2020 and at the time did not know the specifics of Trump’s allegations of widespread election fraud or efforts to reverse his loss. She said she did not identify with any political party, and did not feel political pressure.

“I fully stand by our report as our decision and our conclusion,” she said.

• Associated Press contributed reporting