Efforts by a congressional panel in Washington D.C. to find former President Donald Trump criminally liable for overturning the 2020 presidential election appears to be stalled. And in Georgia, where Trump faces a special grand jury about pressuring state officials to “find” the needed votes to win the state in 2020, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is also having trouble putting together a criminal case.
Prominent election lawyer Jonathan Turley, a Democrat, says the Democrat DA’s grand jury investigation could “bog down on the question of Trump’s intent and knowledge in pushing election fraud claims.” The attorney notes the congressional hearing spent much of its time with Georgia witnesses in showing how they were hounded by Trump supporters and publicly mistreated by Trump. But Turley concludes “a case (has been made) against Trump personally and politically. It has not done so criminally.”
Willis’ special grand jury issued subpoenas against 11 Georgia Republicans who cast “contingent” electoral votes for the then-president in December 2020. Naturally, they moved to quash them. “The abrupt, unsupportable, and public elevation of all 11 nominee electors’ status wrongfully converted them from witnesses who were cooperating voluntarily and prepared to testify in the grand jury to persecuted targets of it. In light of the escalation,” their motion said, “counsel advised the elector nominees to invoke their federal and state constitutional and statutory rights not to provide substantive testimony to the grand jury, advice they have reluctantly accepted.”State GOP Chairman David Shafer, one of the 11, says Republicans chose their own Electoral College representatives because a Trump court case to overturn the Georgia 2020 election result was pending and the GOP presidential electors were needed as part of the legal strategy.
The electors’ motion also declares that Willis and the special grand jury lack jurisdiction to determine the validity of presidential election ballots, which are “inseparably connected” to the federal government.The Democrat DA also issued subpoenas to U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, R-Greensboro, and state Sen. Burt Jones, R-Jackson, who are Trump allies. They are seeking to throw out the subpoenas, and a hearing on Jones’ motion is scheduled for today before Fulton Superior Court Judge Robert McBirney.
