Grand jury wanted charges against Graham, Loeffler and others

• The Georgia special grand jury report was released today. It details the investigation into alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election
• The report recommended criminal charges for 39 people, including one South Carolina senator, Lindsey Graham, and two former Georgia senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue
• The grand jury voted to indict the US senators for their efforts to "overturn the 2020 election". However, prosecutors eventually decided not to indict them
• In total, 20 people were recommended for charges but were not indicted
• The special grand jury did not have the power to indict. The report mostly shed light on the grand jury's thinking that there was a sprawling effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia

• The report said one or more witnesses who testified before the grand jury were believed to have committed perjury

Fulton County Sheriff's OfficeCopyright: Fulton County Sheriff's Office

The Georgia grand jury document contained a long list of individuals recommended for indictment for attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Some, like Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani, ended up among the 19 individuals included in the official indictment unveiled last month. Others, like Senator Lindsey Graham and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, avoided charges.

There was one name among the 19 who appeared nowhere in the grand jury investigation, however: former Trump campaign official Mike Roman.

Roman, who was director of the campaign’s election day operations, is alleged to have been closely involved in assembling slates of “fake” electors claiming Trump had actually won key states he lost. He then, according to the congressional committee investigating the matter, gave those electoral documents to congressional officials and Vice-President Mike Pence with instructions that they cite the conflicting results as a reason to delay congressional certification of the election.

The vice-president refused to go along with the plan, and Congress declared Joe Biden the winner of the presidential election on the morning of 7 January - after pro-Trump supporters had stormed the building the previous day.

According to media reports, the 51-year-old Roman had been co-operating with special counsel Jack Smith as part of the federal investigation into the 2020 election that resulted in Trump’s indictment last month.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, however, chose to include him in her much broader prosecution – even without a grand jury’s formal recommendation to indict.

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The indictments against Donald Trump and 18 of his political allies a few weeks ago thrust Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis into the spotlight. She's back in it today as we learn that she did not indict everyone who the grand jury recommended.

Originally from California, Willis joined the Fulton County District Attorney's office in 2001, serving in various positions there until 2018, when she left to spend several years in private practice.

During her nearly two decades at the DA's office, Willis led more than 100 jury trials. One of these cases - the longest criminal trial in Georgia's history - ended with convictions for for 11 of 12 Atlanta public school officials accused of cheating on state-administered standardised tests in 2009 for better bonuses and promotions.

In 2020, Willis won a run-off election against her former boss, six-term Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard, to become the first woman to be Fulton County's District Attorney.

As she was preparing to start her new role, Donald Trump made a controversial phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and asked him to "find 11,780 votes" - sparking the investigation and subsequent secret grand jury.

Read more about Fani Willis here.

There’s an old cliche that the standard for getting a grand jury indictment is so low that prosecutors could successfully indict a ham sandwich.

In Georgia, however, there were a handful of individuals who the grand jury did not recommend indicting for attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

While votes against former President Donald Trump and his closest advisors were near unanimous, the grand jury was less interested in charging individuals – some of them private citizens – who agreed to list their names on documents that claimed that Trump, not Joe Biden, won a plurality of the vote in Georgia.

Three of these 16 “electors” who met in Atlanta on 14 December 2020, and attested to a Trump victory, were not named in the investigation and may have co-operated with the prosecution.

Another, David Schafer - the chair of the state Republican Party and a former state senator – received an indictment recommendation and was one of the 19 charged last month.

None of the others received more than 10 votes for an indictment recommendation on election charges, short of the 12 votes necessary. They did get recommendations for lesser charges of making false statements and filing false documents - charges Fani Willis chose not to pursue.

The “fake elector” scheme – which included presenting documents to Congress to call into question the election results in several key states - is central to the prosecution’s case that Trump and his allies were illegally trying to reverse the results of the presidential election. It is also a key component of special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump on federal charges.

As we've reported, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham and former Georgia Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue were among those who were recommended for charges by the special grand jury in Georgia.

They were not indicted, but grand jurors had recommended they be charged for their alleged role in the "national effort to overturn the 2020 election", focused on Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Washington DC.

In total, more than 39 people were listed as being part of this category of alleged crimes, of whom 21 were ultimately not charged.

Also included in this category was former national security adviser Michael Flynn, right-wing attorney Lin Wood and several other Trump-affiliated lawyers as well as former Georgia state senator William Ligon.

Senator Lindsey Graham has spoken to the press after the news broke that he was one of 39 people recommended for criminal charges by a Georgia grand jury.

Graham was accused in the report of attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election by pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to flip votes for former president Donald Trump.

In the end, he was never indicted.

Graham denied the accusations, saying when he called Raffensperger he was simply doing his job and inquiring over a legitimate concern of potential voter fraud.

"I feel comfortable with the questions I asked... At the end of the day, I did my job," Graham said.

Graham repeatedly framed the charges against Trump and the recommended indictment against him as politically motivated.

"I think the system in this country is getting off the rails and we have to be careful not to use the legal system as a political tool," Graham said.

Graham said he plans to vote for Trump in 2024.

The special grand jury divided its probe into seven categories of alleged crimes, we've now learned.

They then took separate votes on who should be charged within each category.

The categories include:

• Donald Trump’s phone call on 2 January 2021 to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger
• Efforts to pressure Georgia officials
• False statements in connection with Georgia state legislative hearings
• Harassment of Georgia election workers
• The gathering of a false slate of Republican electors
• A breach of election equipment in Coffee County, Georgia
• The national effort to subvert the 2020 election

The report indicates there was some disagreement among the 23 special grand jurors and three alternates chosen to hear evidence related to election interference efforts.

Seven jurors voted against the recommendation to indict Graham, and six opposed indicting Loeffler.

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South Carolina senator, Lindsey Graham, and former Georgia senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are not the only people that the special grand jury recommended be charged, but who were never indicted.

In total, 21 people were recommended for charges but weren't indicted. Ultimately, 18 of 39 people recommended were charged, including former President Donald Trump.

Here's a list of the others who avoided charges that we learned of today:

• Michael Flynn, former national security adviser
• Lin Wood, right-wing attorney and Trump loyalist
• Cleta Mitchell, former Trump adviser
• Boris Epshteyn, former Trump adviser
• Kurt Hilbert, Trump-affiliated lawyer
• Alex Kaufman, Trump-affiliated lawyer
• Jacki Pick Deason, podcast host
• William Ligon, former Georgia state senator

• Burt Jones, fake elector and current Georgia lieutenant governor
• Joseph Brannan, fake elector
• Vikki Consiglio, fake elector
• Carolyn Fisher, fake elector
• Gloria Godwin, fake elector
• Mark Hennessy, fake elector
• John Downey, fake elector
• Brad Carver, fake elector
• CB Yadav, fake elector
• Mike Amick, fake elector

The 26-page final special grand jury report released today is a significant document that sheds light on the secret panel’s thinking ahead of the indictment of Donald Trump and 18 of his allies three weeks ago.

Notably, the report shows that the special grand jury’s recommendations extended well beyond the charges that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis ultimately brought in the case, recommending at least 10 other people be charged.

Echoing Willis’s comments, the report shows the grand jury assessed that there was a sprawling effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.

The list includes some names that will be easily recognisable to many Americans and followers of US politics, including current Senator Lindsey Graham, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.

The special grand jury, however, was merely an investigative entity and did not have the power to indict anyone - that decision ultimately rested with Willis.

It is still unclear why she decided against criminal indictments against the additional people named in the report.

The report also shows that the special grand jury recommended charging 13 of 16 false electors in Georgia.

Technically, US presidents are elected by slates of electors in each state. In the wake of the 2020 presidential election, an alleged "false electors" scheme was organised in seven states.

Ultimately, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis only opted to indict three of the 16 electors.

The document's footnotes show that some jurors opted not to vote for charges, with two jurors recommending against indictments because they believed the fake electors were "doing what they were misled to understand as their civic duty".

None of the fake electors are facing federal charges for the scheme.

In July, however, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced charges against 16 people for their role in a false electors scheme.

Each time the Atlanta grand jury voted to decide whether to recommend indicting former President Donald Trump, one person said no.

There were votes on the legality of Trump’s phone call pressuring Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, on his contacts with other Georgia officials and on his national efforts to overturn the presidential election.

And there was always a lone holdout – and, in some instances, several abstentions.

That made little difference in the outcome of the grand jury deliberations, where only 12 of the participating jurors needed to agree to approve an indictment recommendation.

In a criminal trial, however, the jury must be unanimous to get a guilty verdict. A holdout in that case could ultimately lead to a hung jury and a mistrial.

Grand jury investigations and jury trials are very different proceedings, of course, but the fact that one juror had doubts even with the lower standard of making a "recommendation" to indict illustrates what a tough task it will be for Fani Willis – and all the other prosecutors who have brought charges against Trump this year – to get a unanimous vote for a conviction.

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In an angry online post, former president Donald Trump has condemned the special grand jury's report as having "zero credibility".

In his post on his Truth social media platform, Trump claimed the report "badly taints Fani Willis and this whole political witch hunt".

"Essentially, they wanted to indict anybody who happened to be breathing at the time," he wrote. "It totally undermines the credibility of the finding".

He also repeats a common Trump refrain that the Georgia case is "election interference" on the part of an "out of control" prosecutor.

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South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, as well as former Georgia Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, narrowly avoided being indicted by Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis.

In one of the most noteworthy revelations in a court document released in Georgia today, the grand jury that investigated efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election voted to recommend indictments for the three senators.

When Willis unveiled her sprawling racketeering charges against 19 individuals including former President Donald Trump, however, the three senators were not included.

The recommendations to indict were close votes – narrowly over the minimum of 12 out of 21 jurors necessary for approval.

That may have factored into a decision by the Atlanta district attorney not to move forward with charges against the senators.

What is certain, however, is that an already highly politically charged case involving several former government officials could have come close to including a current senator and two Georgia politicians who still harbour aspirations for future office.

Loeffler and Perdue both lost their senate campaigns in 2020, handing control of the upper chamber of Congress over to the Democrats in what was considered an electoral surprise.

EPACopyright: EPA

The special grand jury recommended indictments against two former and one current US senator relating to possible efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results, none of whom were ultimately charged.

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

The report recommended Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, and two of Georgia’s former senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue for charges "with respect to the national effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election".

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None were ultimately on the list of 19 people, including the former president, who were charged with conspiracy to overturn the vote.

ReutersCopyright: Reuters

A new Georgia grand jury report shows one current and two former US senators were nearly indicted over their involvement to turn the 2020 election in Donald Trump's favour.

However, they were not on the final list of 18 co-conspirators indicted alongside Trump last month.

Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue – Georgia’s senators at the time – and Senator Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, were recommended for charges, according to the report.

The special grand jury also named Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn, adviser Boris Epshteyn and lawyers Lin Wood and Cleta Mitchell.

The report lays bare the secret panel's thinking as they looked at whether Trump and his allies broke the law during the 2020 election.

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