Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis suggested Tuesday that the special grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump and his allies’ efforts to upend the 2020 election in Georgia and has recommended multiple indictments. It is said that her decision on whether to bring charges is “imminent.”
Donald Trump could be in trouble
At a hearing in Atlanta on whether to publicly release the special grand jury report. Willis, a Democrat, said she opposes making it public at the moment, citing her ongoing deliberations on charges.
“Decisions are imminent,” Willis told Judge Robert McBurney.
“We want to make sure that everyone is treated fairly, and we think for future defendants to be treated fairly it’s not appropriate at this time to have this report released,” she said.
The special grand jury, barred from issuing indictments, penned the highly anticipated final report as a culmination of its seven months of work, which included interviewing witnesses from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani.
The special grand jury heard from a total of 75 witnesses, Willis said Tuesday. Its final report is likely to include some summary of the panel’s investigative work, as well as any recommendations for indictments and the alleged conduct that led the panel to its conclusions.
Donald Wakeford, Fulton County’s chief senior assistant district attorney, also argued to the judge that it would be “dangerous” to release the report before any announcement related to possible charges is made.
“We think immediately releasing before the district attorney has even had an opportunity to address publicly whether there will be charges or not — because there has not been a meaningful enough amount of time to assess it — is dangerous,” Wakeford said. “It’s dangerous to the people who may or may not be named in the report for various reasons. It’s also a disservice to the witnesses who came to the grand jury and spoke the truth to the grand jury.”
Atlanta-area prosecutors are already poring over the report as they weigh whether to bring charges against Trump or his associates.
McBurney, who oversaw the special grand jury’s roughly seven-month investigation, will decide whether the report should be released publicly and, if so, how much of it. While the panel of grand jurors recommended its report be made public, so far, the contents have been closely held.
A media coalition, which includes CNN, is seeking for the full report to be made public.
“We believe the report should be released now and in its entirety. And that approach is consistent with the way the American judicial system operates,” attorney Tom Clyde, representing the coalition, argued. “In other words, it is not unusual for a district attorney or a prosecuting authority to be generally uncomfortable with having to release information during the progress of the case. That occurs all the time.”
At the close of the nearly two-hour hearing, McBurney emphasized the unique nature of the issue, saying:
“I think the fact that we had to discuss this for 90 minutes shows that it is somewhat extraordinary.”
“There’ll be no rash decisions” he said, adding later: “No one’s going to wake up with the court having disclosed the report on the front page of a newspaper.”
Attorneys for Trump did not participate in Tuesday’s hearing.
“The grand jury compelled the testimony of dozens of other, often high-ranking, officials during the investigation, but never found it important to speak with the President,” Trump attorneys Drew Findling, Marissa Goldberg and Jennifer Little said in a statement. “Therefore, we can assume that the grand jury did their job and looked at the facts and the law, as we have, and concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump.”
