Judge Robert C.I. McBurney, Superior Court of Fulton County, released a portion of Fulton County’s Special Purpose Grand Jury report. I’ve been looking forward to this report for nearly a year.
The Special Purpose Grand Jury was empaneled on January 24, 2022, more than a year after former President Trump called the Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger. Trump made the Call to pressure the secretary to not only recount the election votes, but to find 11,700 votes.
The Trump Files
In one section of my book, The Trump Files I wrote about the phone call, and an opinion that Trump most likely broke election laws, and some laws of the State of Georgia.
After eighteen phone call attempts, Donald Trump finally reached Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state. Trump’s phone call was recorded by Raffensperger, who later released the complete phone call. The phone call is full of an absurd collection of Trumpist lies about the election in Georgia.
- Trump told Raffensperger that there are thousands of votes that were not counted.
- Trump claimed that more than 5,000 people who weren’t on the rolls voted. He told the secretary of state that there were more than 18,000 vacant address votes—and some of them only had post office box numbers.
- Trump said that Georgia had nearly 5,000 out-of-state voters.
- Trump said there are photographs of ballot drop boxes that were picked up. Trump claims they weren’t delivered for three days.
- Trump said that he thinks that 5,000 dead people voted.
The phone call continued for an hour. Nearly every sentence is a lie or fabrication. Raffensperger corrected the president and said he found only two dead people had voted. Trump said, “When you add it up, there are at least 300,000 fake ballots.” None of the previous assertions by Trump were true. They were all fabricated by Trump and White House allies.
Jack Hassard (2022). The Trump Files. Northington-Hearn Publishing, Marietta, GA.
Today’s Released Partial Report
I was expecting a lengthy report. Many of us were surprised that the complete report is only nine pages. Judge McBurney only released four pages. We shouldn’t really complain. We’ve seen four ninths of the report.
When we see the full report we will find out who the panel has recommended for indictments. It will be up to the Fulton County District Attorney, Fani Willis, to determine who will be indicted. The biggest finding in the report, other than its length, is that a majority of the panel believed that some of those interviewed may have committed perjury.
The case against Donald Trump and potentially other federal officials, as well as many individuals in Georgia will soon be in the public sphere. As I reported in an earlier post, the case is moving along at an accelerating clip. Today’s announcement and release of the report, will help us find out if Trump and others are indicted for election interference, perjury, and other laws that might have been broken.
AJC Twitter Audio Interview
Tamar Hallerman and Bill Rankin discussed what they thought about the grand jury report. Hallerman and Rankin are senior journalists with the Atlanta Journal Constitution. They have been following and writing about the Fulton County Attorney General’s investigation into Trump’s meddling in the 2020 election. I’ve concluded this post with their interview which was recorded at 2:00 P.M. today.
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