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What to Expect About the Release of a Georgia Grand Jury Report on Donald Trump and the 2020 Election

2023-02-16T15:17:27.668Z


Following a two-year grand jury investigation, excerpts from a report will be released that will give the public more insight into efforts by Trump and his associates to reverse their 2020 election defeat.


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(CNN) --

Parts of a highly anticipated report from an Atlanta-area grand jury investigating Donald Trump's actions in Georgia after the 2020 election will be released Thursday, giving the public a clearer picture until now after two years of investigation into the efforts of the former president and his associates to reverse their electoral defeat.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ordered the limited release earlier this week, writing in his order that the report's introduction and conclusion, as well as concerns the panel had about lying witnesses under oath, are made public this Thursday.

Here's what you need to know about the report's release.

  • Georgia grand jury wraps up its inquiry into Trump and the 2020 election

Photo of the Fulton County Courthouse on September 29, 2022 in Atlanta, Georgia.

(Megan Varner/Getty Images)

Will it shed light on Trump's possible misdeeds?

The big question is whether the portions will include any snippets of information that shed new light on what Trump himself did two years ago and whether the grand jury concluded that the former president committed any wrongdoing.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis's sweeping investigation has sought to determine not only whether Trump committed wrongdoing, but also whether there was a broader criminal conspiracy involved in efforts to overturn the Georgia election results.

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Trump lost to Joe Biden in Georgia by nearly 12,000 votes in 2020. The former president has insisted there was nothing problematic about his campaigning activities.

In document retention requests to Georgia officials in February 2021, Willis said he was investigating potential crimes, including solicitation of voter fraud, making false statements to government agencies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office, and violence or threats related to the administration of elections.

"I think it's certainly possible that what is released ... indicates that the grand jury found that there was criminal conduct involved in the Trump campaign's activities in Georgia after the election," said Clark Cunningham of the W Chair Lee Burge Professor of Law and Ethics at Georgia State University College of Law.

Cunningham added to CNN that "there is no question that whatever (the report) refers to is conduct that was done directly by or on behalf of Donald Trump."

“That would tell us that this cross-section of citizens, having spent nine months hard at work on this, has concluded that at least some of what was done on behalf of the former president to overturn the election results was a crime,” he said.

"I think that's terribly significant."

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What is being investigated

The Georgia investigation was launched nearly two years ago with an hour-long January 2021 phone call from Trump to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asking him to "find" the votes needed for Trump to win the state.

Trump has referred to it as a "perfect" phone call.

Over time, the investigation expanded well beyond Trump's phone call to include false claims of voter fraud to state legislators, a bogus election scheme, attempts by unauthorized persons to gain access to voting machines in a county of Georgia, as well as threats and harassment against election officials.

Willis also investigated the sudden departure of BJay Pak, the US Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.

Willis designated several people as targets of his investigation last year, including 16 Georgia Republicans who served as pro-Trump voters in 2020 and Rudy Giuliani, who was working as Trump's attorney.

What will and will not be in the publication of the report

The grand jury, which was barred from making any indictments, wrote its final report as the culmination of seven months on the job, which included interviewing 75 witnesses, from Giuliani to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to South Carolina Republican Sen. , Lindsey Graham.

The introduction and conclusion of the report, as well as the concerns the panel had about witnesses lying under oath, will be made public this Thursday.

McBurney noted that some of the information in those sections may be redacted.

Other grand jury findings will not yet be made public, particularly the parts where the report makes recommendations about possible charges.

That's because some of the people named in those recommendations may not have appeared in the investigators' proceedings thus far.

Your final report will likely include some summary of the panel's investigative work, as well as any recommendations for prosecution and the alleged conduct that led the panel to its conclusions.

No one has been charged in the case yet, and another grand jury in Fulton County would make those decisions now that the grand jury has presented its findings to Willis.

During a hearing last month on whether to make the report public, Willis, a Democrat, suggested that the special grand jury has recommended multiple indictments and said its decision on whether to file charges is "imminent."

-- CNN's Sara Murray and Devan Cole contributed to this report.

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Source: cnnespanol

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