ATLANTA (AP) — Former President Donald Trump and his allies were briefed by a prosecutor, but the warning did not come from anyone at the Justice Department.
It was from a Georgia prosecutor who indicated she was likely to file criminal charges soon in a two-year investigation into election subversion. In an effort to block the release of a special grand jury’s report, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis argued in court last week that decisions in the case were “imminent” and that publication of the report would infringe rights. of “future defendants”.
While Willis, a Democrat, did not name Trump, her comments were the first time a prosecutor in any of several ongoing investigations related to the Republican former president has hinted that charges could be forthcoming. The comments fueled expectations that an investigation, focused in part on Trump’s phone call with Georgia’s secretary of state, could be completed before federal probes run.
“I expect to see Fulton County indictments before I see federal indictments,” said Clark Cunningham, a law professor at Georgia State University.
In addition to the Georgia investigation, a Justice Department special counsel is investigating Trump for his role in working with allies to reverse his loss in the 2020 presidential election and his alleged mishandling of classified documents.
Trump appeared to be in the most pressing legal jeopardy from the investigation of a cache of classified material at his Florida resort, and that threat remains. But that case seems complicated, at least politically, by the recent discovery of classified documents in President Joe Biden’s Delaware home and a Washington office. The Department of Justice brought in a separate special counsel to investigate that case.
Willis opened her office’s investigation shortly after the release of a recording of a January 2, 2021, phone conversation between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. In that conversation, the then president suggested that Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, could “find” the votes needed to reverse Trump’s narrow election loss in the state against Biden, a Democrat.
“All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, that’s one more than we have,” Trump said on the phone call.
Since then, the scope of the investigation has expanded significantly to include a series of Republican fake voters, phone calls by Trump and others to officials in Georgia in the weeks following the 2020 election, and unfounded allegations of widespread election fraud made to state lawmakers. .
In an interview, Trump insisted he had done “absolutely nothing wrong” and that his phone call with Raffensperger was “perfect.” He said he was “very confident” that he would not be charged.
“She’s supposed to stop violent crime, and that’s her job,” Trump said of Willis. “Not going after people for political reasons, it did that absolutely perfectly.”
It’s unclear how Willis’ case will affect Justice Department investigations or what contact her team has had with federal investigators. Justice Department prosecutors have been cautious in discussing their investigations, offering little insight into how or when they might end.
But Willis’s comments indicate that the Georgia investigation is moving toward a resolution — with charges or not — on a timetable that is independent of what the Justice Department plans to do, legal experts said.
Cunningham, the Georgia state professor, said Willis’ comments implied that the special grand jury’s report contained details of people the panel and Wills felt should at least be further investigated.
“She would not talk about the release of the report biasing potential future defendants unless she saw in the report the names of people she saw as potential future defendants,” he added.
Attorney General Merrick Garland in November asked Jack Smith, a former prosecutor for corruption, to serve as special counsel overseeing investigations into Trump’s actions leading up to the deadly January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol and to his possession of hundreds of classified documents at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
While Smith and his team of prosecutors have issued grand jury subpoenas, he has not disclosed when his investigation could conclude or who could be targeted.
Garland has declined to discuss the probes, saying only that “no one is above the law” and that there are no separate rules for Democrats and Republicans.
FBI agents recently searched Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, and found six items of classified documents, the White House said. Further clouding the Justice Department’s calculus: This month classified documents were found in the Indiana home of Trump’s Vice President, Mike Pence.
Public revelations about Willis’ case are to some extent a result of the unusual nature of the Georgia proceedings.
Willis attempted to convene a special grand jury in January last year to aid her investigation, citing the need for her subpoena to compel testimony from witnesses who would otherwise not speak to her. She said in a letter to the Fulton County Chief Judge that her office had received information indicating there was a “reasonable chance” that Georgia’s 2020 election was “subject to potential criminal disruption.”
The judges of the county’s superior court voted to grant the request, and the panel sat in May. The grand jurors heard 75 witnesses and reviewed evidence gathered by prosecutors and investigators. Among the witnesses who testified were former New York mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Georgia state officials such as Raffensperger and Governor Brian Kemp.
The panel did not have the authority to issue an indictment, but the report is believed to include recommendations for further action, possibly including possible criminal charges.
The special grand jury was disbanded earlier this month after completing its work and finalizing a report on its investigation. The grand jurors recommended that the report be made public.
News organizations, including The Associated Press, pushed for the report to be released. At a hearing last week, Willis said a decision was looming on whether to press charges and she resisted releasing the report because she wanted to make sure “everyone is treated fairly and we think prospective suspects are treated fairly.” are being treated. not appropriate at this time to release this report.”
Lawyers for witnesses and others identified as targets have insisted Willis is driven by politics rather than legitimate concerns that crimes have been committed. They pointed to her public statements and initial willingness to speak to print and television news, among other things.
Danny Porter, a Republican who served as a district attorney in neighboring Gwinnett County for nearly three decades, said Willis is venturing into unfamiliar territory. Special grand juries are relatively rare in Georgia, and the law doesn’t provide much guidance for prosecutors, he said.
Still, Porter said, it appeared Willis hadn’t crossed any ethical or legal red lines that would call into question the integrity of the investigation.
“Procedurally,” he said, “I didn’t see anything that made me think, ‘Oh, geez, I wouldn’t have done that.'”
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Tucker reported from Washington. AP writer Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.
