The prosecutor of Georgia wants to hear from Flynn and Gingrich

A Commission to Investigate Donald Trump’s Deception in Georgia During the 2020 Midterm Election, and it Doesn’t Matter if Mr. Flynn is a National Security Advisor

The prosecutor who is leading an investigation into efforts by Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia is seeking testimony from more of his allies, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Now that the grand jury is done, the Fulton County District Attorney can make charging decisions. Willis’ decisions in this case will reverberate in the 2024 presidential campaign and beyond.

During the heated Oval Office meeting, CNN previously reported, Flynn and Powell floated outrageous suggestions about overturning the election, three weeks after Trump pardoned Flynn.

The petition says Gingrich was a part of a plan to have Republican fake electors sign certificates that stated Trump had won the state despite Joe Biden’s victory.

Compelling testimony from witnesses who don’t live in Georgia necessitates a process of getting judges in the states where they live to order them to appear. She filed petitions on Friday that would likely lead to subpoenas.

CNN previously reported that the district attorney aims to quickly wrap up the grand jury’s work after the midterm elections and could begin issuing indictments as early as December, according to sources familiar with the situation.

Failed Claims about Election Fraud in Fulton County: Investigating a Potential Witnesses’ Interaction with a State Legislator

Flynn didn’t immediately respond to email and phone messages seeking comment, and his lawyer also didn’t immediately return an email seeking comment. Gingrich referred questions to his attorney, who declined to comment. Herschmann was not able to be reached.

She plans to take a monthlong break from public activity during the week leading up to the November election.

Potential witnesses for the election were petitioned to appear in November. But the process for securing testimony from out-of-state witnesses sometimes takes a while, so it appears Willis is putting the wheels in motion for activity to resume after her self-imposed pause.

A Fulton County judge approved the district attorney’s request to document testimony by all 75 witnesses who appeared before the special grand jury, so the full record of transcripts could become public record, according to a source familiar with the investigation. It is not known when this treasure trove of information could be released.

It says he was involved with the plan to run television ads that used false claims about fraud in the 2020 election, and encouraged the public to contact their state officials to ask them to challenge the election results based on those claims.

The petition seeking Flynn’s testimony says he appeared in an interview on conservative cable news channel Newsmax and said Trump “could take military capabilities” and place them in swing states and “basically re-run an election in each of those states.”

On December 18, 2020, he met at the White House with Trump, Powell, and others for a discussion about whether to invoke martial law, seize voting machines, and appoint Powell as special counsel to investigate the 2020 election.

Herschmann was a senior adviser to Trump until the end of his term in August 2020 and was present for multiple meetings between former President Trump and others related to the 2020 election.

She named Penrose as a cyber operations and forensic consultant who worked with Powell and others who had ties to the Trump campaign.

He also communicated with Powell and others regarding an agreement to hire data solutions firm SullivanStrickler to copy data and software from voting system equipment in Coffee County, about 200 miles southeast of Atlanta, as well as in Michigan and Nevada, Willis wrote. Penrose did not immediately respond to an email and phone message seeking comment.

The subject of false claims about election fraud in Fulton County was brought to the attention of an elections worker by a man who helped organize a petition to get Lee’s testimony. He could not immediately be reached for comment.

Senator Lindsey Graham in Georgia and the Challenges of a New Presidential Term: How to Cop with Trump and His Allies

Georgia has special grand juries that are impaneled to investigate complex cases with large numbers of witnesses. They can compel evidence and subpoena witnesses for questioning and, unlike regular grand juries, can also subpoena the target of an investigation to appear before it.

The final report of the investigation can be issued by the special grand jury. It’s up to the district attorney to make the call on whether to indict.

ATLANTA — A federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that Senator Lindsey Graham must appear before the special grand jury that is investigating efforts by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies to overturn Mr. Trump’s election loss in Georgia, although the court set limits on the kinds of questions Mr. Graham could be asked.

In a court document issued this summer, Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court wrote that Mr. Graham, in the course of those phone calls, “questioned Secretary Raffensperger and his staff about re-examining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump.”

A fresh period of political turmoil has been ushered in by the new challenges posed by Donald Trump and his movement.

Trump dropped his clearest hint yet Saturday of a new White House run at a moment when he’s on a new collision course with the Biden administration, the courts and facts.

Trump’s current prominence on the political scene was already highly unusual. One-term presidents tend to disappear fast into history. He still holds onto much of the GOP, even after losing reelection two years ago. And while there is growing talk about whether his thicket of legal and political controversies could convince some GOP primary voters it’s time to move on, Trump still seems to have plenty of juice.

Controversies that are coming to a head underscore that the nation and its political and legal systems are still far from dealing with and moving on from the shock and awe fallout of Trump’s turbulent single White House term. Liz Cheney, who is also the vice chair of the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, said on Sunday that she wanted to avoid Trump turning his potential testimony into a circus.

Those controversies also show that given the open legal and political loops involving the ex-President, a potential 2024 presidential campaign rooted in his claims of political persecution could create even more upheaval than his four years in office.

While both sides of the aisle have differing viewpoints regarding issues like the economy, abortion, foreign policy, and crime, the next elections could be about the ex- President and where he goes from here.

The panel is debating whether to incarcerate Trump and the people around him for their actions around January 6. But the most significant potential areas of criminal liability for the ex-President are in the hands of Attorney General Merrick Garland – over the January 6 case and the classified documents storm – and prosecutors in Georgia, who are investigating attempts by Trump and his allies to overthrow the 2020 election in the key swing state.

The Trump Organization in Arizona: Dems are worried about the election system, and the ex-President is facing criminal tax and insurance fraud charges

In Arizona, one of the ex-president’s favorite candidates is raising doubts about the election system again due to his past record of voter fraud. “I’m afraid that it probably is not going to be completely fair,” Lake told AZTV7 on Sunday.

The New York Post reported last week that one of the most powerful pro-Trump Republicans told them that impeachment of Biden was on the table. South Carolina GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, however, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” Sunday she did not want to see tit-for-tat impeachment proceedings after Trump was twice impeached. She was against the process being weaponized. But when asked whether Biden had committed impeachable offenses, she said: “That is something that would have to be investigated.”

The Republicans in Washington are likely to increase their presence after the elections. Scores of Trump-endorsed candidates are running on a platform of his 2020 election fraud falsehoods, raising questions over whether they will accept results should they lose their races in just over two weeks.

On another politically sensitive front, the Trump Organization’s criminal tax fraud and grandy larceny trial begins in Manhattan on Monday. The ex-President hasn’t been personally charged but the trial could impact his business empire and prompt fresh claims from him that he is being persecuted for political reasons that could inject yet another contentious element into election season. In a separate civil case, New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, has filed a $250 million civil suit against Trump, three of his adult children and the Trump Organization, alleging that they ran tax and insurance fraud schemes to enrich themselves for years.

Democrats are trying to get Trump back in the news. President Joe Biden compared the followers of the political movement to fascists, and some campaigns have warned suburban voters that pro- Trump candidates are a danger to democracy.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/24/politics/donald-trump-circus-analysis/index.html

Can a former President defend himself against the subpoena? An analysis of an investigation by NBC News’ J.D. Donoghue

But raging inflation and spikes in gasoline prices appear to be a far more potent concern before voters head to the polls, which could spell bad news for the party in power in Washington.

A former President told his supporters at a rally in Texas on Saturday that he would probably have to run for president again.

Cheney told NBC that it could take multiple days and that it would be done with rigor and seriousness.

“This isn’t going to be, you know, his first debate against Joe Biden and the circus and the food fight that that became. This is a very serious set of issues.

With Mr. Donoghue on the line, Mr. Trump launched into the same tired, disproved and discredited allegations he had been spreading for a long time. Mr Donoghue told him that it was not true. According to Mr. Donoghue, Mr. Trump, exasperated that his own handpicked top appointees at the Justice Department would not affirm his baseless allegations, responded: “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”

The committee used testimony throughout its presentations and took most depositions behind closed doors. Most of its sympathetic witnesses have appeared in person. The narrative that has been created by this has helped create a powerful one, but it has deprived viewers of seeing witnesses who were under cross examination. It is hard to know if the committee’s case would meet the requirements of a court of law.

The prospect of video testimony over an intense period of days or hours is likely to be unappealing to the former President because it would be harder for him to dictate the terms of the exchanges and control how his testimony might be used.

This could all become academic anyway. Given the possibility of a Trump legal challenge to the subpoena, the issue could drag on for months and become moot since a possible new Republican House majority would likely sweep the January 6 committee away as one of its first acts.

If there is evidence a crime was committed, Garland would face a dilemma over whether the national interest lay in implementing the law to its full extent or whether the consequences of prosecuting a former commander in chief in a fractious political atmosphere could tear the country apart.

A second White House term for the ex-president will cause a lot of controversy. But sparing him from accountability if there’s evidence of a crime would send a damaging signal to future presidents with strongman instincts.

The emails of the House Committee on the case of false election fraud against the U.S. Attorney for Elections Jeremiah Eastman

It would be difficult for the Senate to include Biden’s electors in their vote since there was a case pending in the Supreme Court. Thomas, as the justice assigned to deal with emergency matters coming from the southern part of the country, would end up being the key here.

According to the newly available emails, Trump’s lawyers were so concerned about him filing in court a signed statement asserting false election fraud claims that they worried he might be prosecuted for a crime.

The email referencing Thomas was first reported by Politico. It is part of a tranche of emails the House has obtained from Eastman, under an order from a court, that are still subject of litigation before an appeals court. The emails were available through a link in a court filing submitted by the House committee early Wednesday.

A federal judge found that the Trump team was using litigation to meddle with Congress in order to reverse their electoral loss. Carter, in deciding last month that the emails should be released to the House committee, said that some of them showed evidence of obstruction of an official proceeding.

In a separate email Chesebro acknowledged their plans were a long shot, putting the odds of success at the Supreme Court before the January 6 congressional certification at “1%.”

But, he wrote, “a lot can happen in the 13 days left,” and having the election results of multiple states under review in the courts and in state legislatures could bolster the push to extend Congress’ debate over certifying the results.

In an email two days later, Chesebro said that having Georgia “in play” on a Supreme Court filing could be “critical.” If a case in Georgia came before the Supreme Court, Vice President Mike Pence would be able to refuse to open any of the envelopes that show the state’s electoral votes.

Such a move by Pence would force the court to act on the petitions, Chesebro said. There are certain procedural options Trump and Pence can use to create additional delay, and they could also put pressure on the court to act.

An Attorney General’s Letter to the White House: No Evidence for Election Fraud During the 2020 Presidential Re-election Campaign, but No Evidence of Corrupt Practices

Doug Letter told the appeals court that the public link to the files was not intentional.

The private attorneys were discussing changing the verification for Trump to sign. Emails show there were no people in the White House who were able to observe Trump’s signing before the new year. The lawyer wrote a question about what the president would do for a trip to a store.

The adviser and lawyer to the White House was concerned about the president signing a verification when specific numbers were included. He was specifically concerned about numbers that implied that felons, dead people and people who had moved had voted improperly, another Eastman email showed.

On the night before New Years, Trump was in flight and was going to speak with Herschmann about signing the verification.

The lawyers suggested that Trump use a t-shirt instead of a signed document, which would make it look like he was committing perjury.

On Dec. 27, 2020, more than six weeks after losing re-election, an infuriated President Donald Trump telephoned his acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen. Mr. Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, had announced his resignation less than two weeks earlier, after telling the president that the claims of election fraud Mr. Trump had been trumpeting were — as Mr. Barr later bluntly put it in testimony — “bullshit” and publicly affirming that there was no fraud on a scale that would affect the outcome of the election.

The statement was remarkable even for the president who had abused his powers. Having been told by the very department that had investigated his claims of fraud that they were untrue, Mr. Trump told the acting attorney general and his deputy to lie about it and said he would take it from there.

It seems self-explanatory that Mr. Trump lied to the American people about whether they can rely on elections to ensure the peaceful transfer of power, even though he caused days of violence in the Capitol. The former president is guilty of what he did because he knew Republican members of Congress would go along with his big lie.

A more narrow case might make slightly more sense: Given the extraordinary circumstances around it, Ms. Willis will surely have her hands full. And it will feature a likely lead defendant who has demonstrated his propensity for legal circuses — coming in the midst of a heated political season no less.

A scenario in which a Democrat like Willis could have been better positioned to deliver on some of the reforms the left wing of the party has fought for, is similar to what Governor Deal went through. Kim Jackson, the chaplain at the protests, has since been elected to the State Senate and she told me she supported Willis because he was running on an anti death penalty platform. A mass shooting at multiple spas in and around Atlanta left eight dead, including Asian women, and appeared to be a hate crime. After the event, the accused shooter’s mother said that she would seek the death penalty. And though Willis campaigned on pretrial diversion in lieu of prison time as one of her major reform issues, a report released by the American Civil Liberties Union on overcrowded and unsafe conditions at the Fulton County Jail cited insufficient use of diversion and a failure to indict arrested individuals in a timely manner as two major factors.

Willis told me the report was “a joke” and offered several arguments for why the data was flawed. 25 people are in the Fulton County Jail, and they’re there for 48 hours. A lot of people with crimes who are regular citizens would probably not stay in jail, even if they had burglarized my house. People are given bail.”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ’20/20 Report on a Special Grand Juror Investigation’ by Trump and the 2021 Phone Call to the Secretary of State

Mark Binelli is a contributing writer for the magazine. He last wrote about the opera director Yuval Sharon, and before that about the tangled legal aftermath of a deadly Waco, Texas, biker brawl. A visual artist is interested in telling stories through a Black female perspective. The British Journal of Photography named her one of the Ones to Watch in 2019.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently spoke anonymously with five of the jurors who served on the special grand jury. “A lot’s gonna come out sooner or later,” one of the jurors said. It is going to be massive. It will be massive.

The introduction and conclusion of the report as well as questions about witnesses lying under oath will be made public on Thursday. McBurney stated that some information may have to be redacted.

The big uncertainty is whether the portions include any new information that would shed new light on what Trump did two years ago or if the grand jury decided that he committed no crimes.

Trump lost to Joe Biden in Georgia by nearly 12,000 votes in 2020. The former president denied there was a problem with his activities during the election.

She was investigating possible crimes related to the election, including solicitation of election fraud, false statements to government bodies, racketeers, and violation of oath of office, among others, in document preservation requests to Georgia officials.

Cunningham added to CNN that “there is no doubt that whatever (the report is) referring to is either conduct that was done directly by Donald Trump or done on his behalf.”

He said that some of the things that were done to overturn the election results by the former president were a crime. That is really significant.

The Georgia probe was set off nearly two years ago by an hourlong January 2021 phone call from Trump to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asking him to “find” the votes necessary for Trump to win the Peach State. Trump referred to it as a perfect phone call.

The special grand jury, barred from issuing indictments, penned their final report as a culmination of its seven months of work, which included interviewing 75 witnesses, from Giuliani to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham.

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.

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

A source with knowledge of the investigation says that prosecutors are considering racketeering and conspiracy charges in connection with Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia.

Whether it’s simple or broad, if a case is opened, one thing is nearly certain: It will probably take the next two years and possibly longer. We would surely see a flurry of legal filings from Mr. Trump, which while often meritless nevertheless take time. Here the battle would likely be waged around pretrial motions and appeals by Mr. Trump arguing, as he has done in other cases, that he was acting in his official presidential capacity and so is immune.

Even if the courts work at the relatively rapid pace of other high-profile presidential cases, we would still be talking about months of delay. In both U.S. v. Nixon and Thompson v. Trump, about three months were consumed from the first filing of the cases to the final rejection of presidential arguments by the U.S. Supreme Court. There are more issues in this case, which have the likelihood of requiring additional time. At the earliest, Ms. Willis would be looking at a trial toward the end of 2023. The appeals would not be concluded until the end of 2024, even if that schedule is aggressive.

It’s not clear whether perjury indictments would involve Trump or people close to him. The ex-president did not testify before the special grand jury. And Trump maintains he did nothing wrong.

Questions about Georgia are complicated by the fact that Thursday’s excerpts came from a grand jury report that was only partially released. It is a one-sided document since witnesses do not testify alongside counsel or have a chance to refute accusations. The rest of the report was not released as a precautionary measure because of the possible future charges of those who may or may not be charged. Still, the recommendations of perjury prosecutions, although non-binding, represent a small step forward on the issue of whether there will criminal accountability for an attempt to subvert democracy – or to cover it up.

There is no definitive answer to whether or not there is evidence enough for indictments or to win a critical case. But the answer may be coming soon.

There will be indictments for perjury or other crimes according to Thomas Dupree, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Bush administration.

There was no evidence of voter fraud that could have changed the results of the election in favor of Biden, according to the grand jury.

Norm Eisen, a legal and ethics expert, told CNN that the conclusion was an important building block in any case against Trump. The finding “goes right to the core of what Donald Trump has been claiming happened in Georgia. Eisen spoke on CNN’s “Newsroom” about how it rejected him.

“It also establishes a basis for bringing charges – you couldn’t bring charges without this kind of a conclusion – on solicitation of election fraud. The nail in the coffin was already full of them.

It would be wrong to get excited by the events in Georgia or to interpret them in a way that is out of place, warned former attorney general Albert Gonzalez.

Heaphy, the grand jury whose investigation of the 2021 riot at the Capitol, and an indictment against the rapper Young Thug

I don’t want to do anything else. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state,” Trump said, according to a transcript of the call that took place on January 2, 2021.

I think indictments are likely in Georgia and at the federal level if there is conflicting information, according to Timothy Heaphy.

The foreperson of the grand jury that investigated Donald Trump in Georgia told CNN on Tuesday that they are looking at multiple indictments and perhaps a “big name”.

“They were present for really significant events. The special counsel will want to hear about the president’s understanding of the election results and also what happened on January 6. They had communications with him about the events preceding the riot at the Capitol.

The special counsel has a massive amount of evidence already in-hand that it now needs to comb through, including evidence recently turned over by the House January 6 committee, subpoena documents provided by local officials in key states and discovery collected from lawyers for Trump allies late last year in a flurry of activity, at least some of which had not been reviewed as of early January, sources familiar with the investigation told CNN at the time.

“He will not stop because of a family relationship, because of purported executive privilege,” Heaphy said of Smith. “He believes that the law entitles him to all of that information, and he’s determined to get it.”

“The reason that I am a fan of RICO is, I think jurors are very, very intelligent,” Willis said at a news conference about a broad gang-related indictment over the summer of 2022. “They want to know what happened. They want to make an accurate decision. And so RICO is a tool that allows a prosecutor’s office and law enforcement to tell the whole story.”

John Floyd is a lawyer who has experience in racketeering cases and he is assisting Fulton County on several cases, including the indictment against the rapper Young Thug, which is using the RICO Act.

Trump denies any wrongdoing when it comes to the White House. He claims that he won the election in Georgia, and still promotes the false notion that he’s a democrat.