(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
'I don't think you will be shocked,' Georgia grand juror says of possibility of Trump indictment [1]
['Daily Kos Staff', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']
Date: 2023-02-22
Asked by Kate Bolduan if the “not short” list of recommended indictments was more than 12, Kohrs called it “probably a good assumption.” She also described hearing “a lot of very compelling evidence, a lot of very interesting things, things that we didn’t expect. We discovered a lot as we went.”
As for Trump’s insistence that the special grand jury report exonerated him, Kohrs called it “Fascinating,” adding, “I’m not positive he read the right document.”
Trump was always going to claim he was exonerated, though. In fact, his attorneys had said that the special grand jury exonerated him even before its report was released. Because he was never called in or subpoenaed by this grand jury, they claimed, “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.”
Trump’s absence from in-person testimony doesn’t mean the grand jury didn’t hear from him. Willis kicked off this investigation in response to Trump’s call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which he demanded that Raffensperger “find 11,780 votes,” the number Trump needed to win. It was always safe to say that the grand jurors would hear from Trump in recorded form, and Kohrs told CNN that wasn’t the only Trump call they heard. “Yes. I’m positive I have heard the president on the phone more than once,” she said.
In the CNN interview, referring to the report’s recommendation of perjury charges for some, Kohrs drew a distinction between “crimes we were called to investigate and crimes that were committed in the room.” Sen. Lindsey Graham, who fought hard to avoid testifying, said on ABC’s This Week that he had “no concerns about [his] testimony,” and Kohrs told the Associated Press that he did answer questions. Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, on the other hand, repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment (which probably means he didn’t commit perjury).
While the investigation began with that Trump call to Raffensperger, it expanded beyond that to consider evidence on the slate of false electors attempting to throw the state to Trump; state legislators’ false allegations of election fraud; the resignation of Byung Pak as U.S. attorney in Atlanta, a resignation he told congressional investigators was because he had heard Trump was planning to fire him; the computer forensics team hired by Trump allies that copied voting system software in one Georgia county; and the harassment campaign directed against Fulton County elections worker Ruby Freeman.
Trump seems in jeopardy of indictment here, which would definitely draw the biggest headlines, but there is also plenty of room there for indictments of people most of us have never heard of but who were eager members of the effort to overturn an election and commit a coup. And those people are also important—not just in Trump’s 2020 attempt but in 2024 and beyond. If there are no consequences now, those people will just keep going.
RELATED STORY:
Georgia was ground zero for Trump's 2020 coup plot, and could be first to indict him for his actions
Yes, electing the president by popular vote is possible! Joining us on this week's episode of The Downballot is former Vermont legislator Christopher Pearson, an official with National Popular Vote, the organization advocating for states to adopt a compact that would award their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who gets the most votes nationwide. Pearson walks us through the mechanics of the compact, debunks some common misconceptions, and lays out future steps toward hitting the required 270 electoral votes for the agreement to come into force.
Co-hosts David Beard and David Nir also mark The Downballot's one-year anniversary (if you can believe it) by unwrapping a present from the New York Senate, which just shot down Gov. Kathy Hochul's unacceptably conservative pick for the state's top court in epic fashion. In addition, the Davids preview key races coming up next week in Wisconsin and New Hampshire and dive into a brand-new data set from Daily Kos Elections' Stephen Wolf showing just how out of balance the Senate is: Republicans haven't won the popular vote since 1998 but have still controlled the chamber half the time since then.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/22/2154341/-Grand-jurors-in-Georgia-2020-election-investigation-definitely-discussed-Trump-a-lot
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
