News media gathered outside the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta on Monday ahead of a coming grand jury decision on whether or not to indict former President Donald Trump on charges of interfering with the 2020 presidential vote count in the state. Photo by Erik S. Lesser/EPA-EFE
Aug. 14 (UPI) — A Georgia grand jury heard from a series of witnesses in Atlanta on Monday as it considered possible indictments against former President Donald Trump, based on allegations of vote tampering in the 2020 presidential election.
Should he be hit with state charges in Georgia, it would be Trump’s fourth criminal case in the news in recent months. He already is facing federal criminal charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith for allegations of 2020 election interference and his possession of classified documents, as well as state charges in New York over alleged hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Monday began laying out her case prior to the jury weighing a decision on a potential indictment, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. That decision would bring the two-year long investigation to a new stage and likely start a new chapter in the ever-growing legal battles for the former president.
Willis’ presentation was initially expected to last about two days, but the proceedings appeared to be moving quickly as one witness, freelance journalist George Chidi, indicated he would testify Monday after saying over the weekend he was scheduled to testify on Tuesday.
“Change of plans. I’m going to court today,” he wrote in a post on X, the social-media platform formerly known as Twitter. “They’re moving faster than they thought.”
Former state Rep. Bee Nguyen and former state Sen. Jen Jordan, both Democrats, were also seen entering and leaving the courthouse.
The two former state lawmakers were part of legislative committees that in December 2020 heard testimony from Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, in which the former New York mayor raised alarms about what the Trump campaign called “widespread fraud” in the state’s 2020 presidential election. No such voter fraud was ever found.
Nguyen confirmed her grand jury appearance in a statement released on Monday.
“We all have a duty to preserve our democracy,” she wrote. “We owe this duty to the great individuals that fought and sacrificed to create and pass down this democracy to us, and we owe this duty to future generations that cannot pick up the mantle yet.”
Trump, meanwhile, blasted the proceedings in several social media posts Monday, including one in which he repeated unsubstantiated claims that it was unnamed others who “tampered” with Georgia’s vote count.
“No, I didn’t tamper with the election! Those who rigged & stole the election were the ones doing the tampering, & they are the slime that should be prosecuted,” he said in the post on Truth Social.
At the center of the case in Fulton County is a phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. In the conversation, Trump pressured Raffensperger to “find” the votes he needed to overtake Biden in the election.
Giuliani and several more members of Trump’s inner circle also were allegedly involved in pressuring state officials.
An indictment by the state of Georgia for election interference would differ from the federal charges issued by Department of Justice in several important ways, including a broader scope focusing not just on Trump, himself, and the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, but also on alleged accomplices such as Giuliani and more than a dozen “fake presidential electors.”
Several of the would-be electors have struck plea bargain deals and Willis is expected to seek charges against more than a dozen people in total, CNN reported last week.
The network cited sources saying Willis is seeking to bring conspiracy and racketeering charges against Trump and the others, using the same kinds of charges frequently deployed against Mafia bosses in order to take down entire criminal organizations.
