The decision on whether to indict ex-President Donald Trump for attempting to influence the results of the election in the US state of Georgia is fast approaching. Two witnesses confirmed to several US media outlets on Saturday that they had received subpoenas for a jury meeting this Tuesday. The so-called grand jury will decide on a possible indictment against Trump.
It is expected that the public prosecutor’s office will then also present the results of their investigation, as reported by the “New York Times” and CNN, among others. It usually takes juries just a few days to rule on possible charges. If they decide to indict, it would be the fourth criminal case against ex-President Trump. According to the reports, further charges are possible in Georgia against people who supported Trump in his project at the time.
The background to the investigations in Georgia are Trump’s attempts to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election there. Trump lost the election to Democrat Joe Biden. To this day, the Republican refuses to admit defeat and claims, without any evidence, that massive electoral fraud robbed him of a victory. Georgia was one of the states that played a key role in the outcome of the election. Biden won there by just under 12,000 votes. Trump tried to undo his election defeat there afterwards.
Among other things, he called on Georgia’s chief election supervisor, his Republican party colleague Brad Raffensperger, in an hour-long phone call to “find” enough votes for him to “recalculate” and shoot the result. Because of these and other attempts to influence that became public, the responsible prosecutor Fanni Willis in Fulton County in the state of Georgia had launched investigations in 2021.
Willis had already signaled at the end of July that the preparatory work on the case was complete. “We’ve been working for two and a half years. We’re ready to go,” she said. The first security barriers had already been erected around the courthouse in Georgia’s capital, Atlanta. Observers expected a decision from the grand jury in August.
In the past few months, charges have been brought against Trump in three other cases in New York, Miami and Washington. The New York case is related to hush money payments to a porn star. The Miami case revolves around the storage of top-secret government documents in Trump’s private home. In Washington, Trump faces possible voter fraud and his role in the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
None of these cases, and no possible conviction, preclude Trump from running for president or becoming president in 2024. The case in Georgia would not be heard at the federal but at the state level, so he could not pardon himself in the event of an election victory. In the cases under federal law, this might be possible.
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