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Prosecutors in Georgia gave their biggest hint that former President Donald Trump might be charged in connection with his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results while arguing against the public release of a special grand jury report.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on Tuesday urged Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney not to make public the findings of a jury who have spent months hearing evidence about the former president and his allies' actions around the last presidential election.
While not naming anyone, Willis asked the judge to be wary of "protecting future defendants' rights" with regards to the ongoing criminal probe, adding that a decision on potential criminal charges is "imminent."
McBurney ultimately agreed to keep the report from the special grand jury, which is likely to include recommendations about criminal charges, unsealed for the time being.
While the special grand jury has heard evidence and witness testimony for several months before being disbanded in early January, it is Willis who will ultimately decide who should be charged.
The investigation originally centered on whether Trump committed a crime during his January 2021 phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which the former president asked him to "find" the 11,780 votes needed to beat Joe Biden in the state.
The probe has since widened to include allegations of a plot by Trump allies to send fake Georgia electors to falsely declare him the winner in a number of key states in 2020, as well as claims of racketeering-related charges and intimidation of election workers.
Trump is not directly linked to all of the possible charges that might come out of the Georgia investigation, with his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, among the Republican figures who have also formed part of the inquiry.
However, the possibility of Willis deciding whether to take the historic step to make him the first U.S. president to be charged with a crime is looming over her decisions.
Criminal defense attorney Rachel Fiset, co-founder and managing partner ZFZ Law, said that if the special grand jury report is not made public, the information it contains could be "highly significant" to Trump, his campaign and Willis' decision making.
"No matter what it says, the Trump campaign will immediately begin to spin the information in a way that suggests there were no crimes committed," Fiset told Newsweek.
"Should that happen, the D.A. may get a better understanding of how the residents of Fulton County would react to a prosecution of the former president. She may also have a clearer understanding of the defenses Trump would be mounting if he were charged— and if those defenses have merit."
Fiset added that if the report is damning about Trump's actions, and there is support, then Willis will be more inclined to make the "massive task" of prosecuting a former president.
"As a prosecutor, she likely feels that she cannot treat Trump as above the law and effectively garner the respect she needs to reside over the District Attorney's office in Fulton County," she said.
Legal experts have long suggested that the probe in Georgia is the one in which Trump is most likely to be charged.
As well as the federal investigation into the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, the former president is facing possible criminal charges over allegations that he refused a subpoena to hand over classified documents found at his Mar-a-Lago resort in August and hindered the federal attempt to retrieve them.
Questions have been raised as to whether the Department of Justice will decide to charge Trump over the appearance of top-secret documents at his Florida home, given that President Joe Biden, and now former Vice President Mike Pence, were also found to have possessed sensitive materials at their residences.
Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and president of Los Angeles-based West Coast Trial Lawyers, said that Willis' reputation as an "aggressive prosecutor," on top of a grand jury recommendation, means her investigation is the one most likely to take the unprecedented act of charging a former president.
"Biden's mishandling of classified documents makes it unlikely that Trump is charged for the Mar-a-Lago documents," Rahmani told Newsweek. "And nothing Attorney General Merrick Garland or Special Counsel Jack Smith has said or done leads me to believe Trump will be charged for his role in the Capitol riots.
"Similarly, New York prosecutors are either suing Trump civilly or charging his entities and not him personally. That leaves Willis as the prosecutor most likely to pursue criminal charges against Trump. If so, it would be the most politically charged prosecution in American history."
On Tuesday, Trump repeated his defense that his phone call with Raffensperger was "perfect" while continuing to push the false claim that the 2020 election was "rigged" due to widespread voter fraud.
"Many people, including lawyers for both sides, were knowingly on the line. I was protesting a RIGGED & STOLEN Election, which evidence proves it was," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "I won Georgia by a lot, but only needed a small number of votes from that total number."
Trump's lawyers were not present during the hearing on Tuesday on whether to release the special grand jury report.
"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," attorneys Drew Findling, Marissa Goldberg and Jennifer Little said in a statement.
About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, and Florida ... Read more