The Atlanta-area special grand jury that was investigating whether former President Donald Trump and his aides violated the law in their efforts to rig the 2020 election has completed its work, according to a recent court filing.
“Given the special purpose grand jury’s delivery of its final report, the undersigned’s recommendation, and the Superior Court bench’s vote, it is the ORDER of this court that the special purpose grand jury now stands DISSOLVED,” judge Robert McBurney, who has been overseeing the Fulton County special grand jury investigation, wrote in the brief court document on Monday.
Special grand juries are not permitted to indict anybody in Georgia. However, the panel will create a final report that the special grand jury will use to recommend to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis whether or not to seek indictments in her probe into election meddling. After that, Willis might request an indictment from a grand jury that has been duly constituted.
Willis started her investigation into Trump and his associates in early 2021, not long after a call from January became public in which Trump allegedly pressed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the votes he needed to win the Peach State in the presidential election. Willis has already spent more than a year looking into Trump and his associates.
Her probe has expanded to include phony allegations of election fraud made to state legislators, the fake elector scheme, unauthorized individuals trying to access voting equipment in one Georgia county, and intimidation of election officials.
On January 24, McBurney has scheduled a hearing for the Fulton County District Attorney’s office and other parties to make their case for or against making the special grand jury’s report public. McBurney asserts that the special purpose grand jury recommended the publication of its final report.
