GA grand jury says some witnesses lied
A Georgia judge released parts of a report produced by an Atlanta-area special grand jury investigating efforts by President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia — though the panel’s recommendations on potential charges remain secret.
The five-page excerpt made public on Thursday revealed that a majority of the grand jury concluded that some witnesses may have lied under oath during their testimony before the panel and recommended that charges be filed. The grand jury did not identify those witnesses in the unsealed excerpt.
“A majority of the grand jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it,” the report reads. “The grand jury recommends that the district attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling.”
The unsealed document offered no major clues about the grand jury’s other findings — though the panel pointedly noted that it unanimously agreed that Georgia’s 2020 presidential vote had not been marred by “widespread fraud” as has been claimed by Trump and his allies.
GA Grand Jury provides plenty evidence of Trump’s criminal activity
The special grand jury report issued in Georgia contains some “very bad news” for Donald Trump, according to legal experts.
The nine-page report contains only two new findings, showing the special grand jury concluded there was no widespread election fraud in the state and that at least one witness should be indicted for perjury, which will then be up to Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis to decide.
“We find by a unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election,” the report found.
Willis had asked a court to block much of the full report from release while she decided on charges, so only portions were issued Thursday to the public, but those findings were enough for legal experts to declare the former president was in trouble.
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“The GA special grand jury excerpts are starting to emerge & they are very bad for Trump,” said attorney Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. “’We find by unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election.’ If that’s true, then Trump likely committed crimes.”
He later concluded, “The GA special grand jury has spoken–that means Trump committed crimes He’s gonna get indicted.”
“This is me reading into it, but it’s perfectly clear they recommended more than one indictment,” agreed legal analyst Luppe B. Luppen, who goes by “SouthPaw.”
National security analyst Marcy Wheeler took a different approach, citing the lack of fraud in Georgia and commenting, “Donald Trump loses GA for a Sixth time!!!”
Los Angeles Times legal analyst Harry Litman summed the report up in one tweet: “Basically, we sat, we discussed, we voted on charges. And yes, some people committed perjury, and we agreed that there was no fraud in the election.”
Lawyer Allison Gill pointed out the piece of the report noting one piece not previously known is “that they recommend indictments for the unnamed people who lied under oath.” The report cites at least one person who lied, under oath but didn’t give any details about how many people.
The new grand jury begins next month. The “special” grand jury doesn’t have the power to indict, only a regular grand jury can do that. This one, however, will likely be impaneled for a lot less time than the previous one given the legwork is mostly complete.
Former FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann pointed out that the lack of fraud in Georgia is “not a good omen for Trump & co; the next shoe to drop will be Willis’s.”
Former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal joked, “Or, as Bill Barr would summarize the report, ‘The report concludes no crimes were committed whatsoever.’” It’s a reference to the former attorney general asserting himself prior to the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report which ultimately cited 10 cases of obstructions of justice by the former president. Using Barr’s rewriting of the facts, Trump declared himself “exonerated” when he wasn’t.
What is hidden in the GA grand jury report is what’s important
The special grand jury report may not have offered any bombshell evidence against Donald Trump and his allies, but a legal expert explained that it showed just enough to suggest trouble on the horizon.
The Fulton County special grand jury issued a nine-page report the concluded there had been no widespread election fraud in Georgia’s presidential election in 2020, and they believed at least one of the witnesses who testified before them should be indicted for perjury, and MSNBC legal analyst Chuck Rosenberg said district attorney Fani Willis might have all she needs to press charges.
“I just wanted to remind viewers of one important thing that’s missing from the report, and that’s the record of all of the witnesses who went in front of that special grand jury and under oath testified,” Rosenberg said. “So there’s no mention of what they said in the report, there’s no compendium of the evidence that they gave.
“But all of that evidence is in the possession of the district attorney. She knows what everyone said, she knows what they said under oath [and] she can use that evidence to build her case.”
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“So I don’t want people to think that the special grand jury simply met and wrote a nine-page heavily redacted report,” he added. “Rather, they met for months, they heard from scores of witnesses, and everything those people said in the grand jury under oath is evidence of the underlying case and can be used by the district attorney, so the report is somewhat interesting.”
“It’s not all that revelatory, but all that work that the special grand jury did is all available to the district attorney and will inform her prosecutive decision and inform, if there are trials down the road, what evidence jurors at those trials hear.”
Trump’s PAC finances will sink him
The FBI wants to know how Donald Trump spent the money his “Save America” PAC raised on his false claims of mass voter fraud, the Daily Beast reports.
The Save America PAC was created after the 2020 election and was set up as a “leadership PAC,” which allows Trump to access the funds even after leaving office.
The organization was investigated by the Jan. 6 committee for possible wire fraud. As the Daily Beast points out, when the committee issued its final report, its “Follow the Money” appendix revealed some questionable vendor relationships.
“A number of former Trump officials appear to have been on the Save America payroll, taking money through shell LLCs. Smith’s investigation, according to reports, appears concerned with whether those payments were legitimate,” the Beast’s report stated.
From the Daily Beast: “For instance, the report noted that from July 2021 to the present, Save America appears to have paid longtime Trump adviser and former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino in two ways simultaneously—personally and through an LLC. Scavino, FEC records show, makes about $9,700 a month on the Save America payroll. At the same time, Save America was also making monthly payments of $20,000 to an entity called Hudson Digital LLC, which FEC filings peg to Scavino’s address.”
Speaking to the Daily Beast, Robert Maguire of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said that after looking at the pattern, “you have to wonder whether it’s part of an effort to keep people quiet about what they saw in the Trump administration.”
“If they only paid them directly, you’d see a list of all these people who left the administration suddenly getting these massive monthly paychecks, some of them more than others. But by paying them through these companies, it gives the outward impression that these companies must be doing something,” he said.