Georgia could convene a grand jury to probe whether Trump and his allies interfered in the 2020 election, report says

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Georgia could convene a grand jury to probe whether Trump and his allies interfered in the 2020 election, report says
Former President Donald Trump. James Devaney
  • A Georgia DA may convene a grand jury to consider election-tampering claims, per the NYT.
  • It would focus on how Trump and his allies dealt with Georgia officials after the 2020 election.
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A district attorney in Georgia is likely to convene a grand jury to investigate claims that former President Donald Trump and his allies south to tamper in the presidential election there, The New York Times reported.

Trump and members of his administration had extensive interactions with Georgia officials in the aftermath of the election as he repeatedly pushed baseless claims that widespread voter fraud has deprived him of victory over Joe Biden.

The DA in question is Fani Willis of Fulton County, a Democrat, The Times said. The outlet wrote that he is considering empaneling a grand jury to investigate election-tampering claims as part of an investigation that could prove politically fraught for Trump.

A recent analysis by the Brookings Institution, a think-tank in Washington, DC, suggested that Trump and his allies could be charged with multiple crimes over election interference in Georgia.

Its experts suggested criminal solicitation to commit election fraud, intentional interference with performance of election duties, and conspiracy to commit election fraud.

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Trump has yet to be charged with any wrongdoing in the Georgia election.

In perhaps the most politically fraught of Trump's interactions with Georgia officials, he called Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and asked him to "find 11,780 votes," enough to swing the state in his favor.

"There's no way I lost Georgia," Trump said during the phone call. "There's no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes."

There is no evidence to support Trump's claims. The official election tally showed that he lost the state to Biden by nearly 12,000 votes.

Trump has continued to push for Georgia to overturn the election result, and wrote again to Raffensperger in September to ask him to decertify Biden's victory there.

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In a recent interview with Insider, Raffensperger said that election-counting machines had not been rigged, as some of Trump's allies had claimed, and said a subsequent hand-recount disproved claims of widespread election fraud in Georgia.

Two grand juries - groups of citizens tasked with deciding whether criminal charges should be brought - are already sitting in Fulton County.

Neither of them is tasked with this still-hypothetical case, The Times said, and there is a backlog of thousands of other cases they could be given.

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