A judge in Georgia has issued portions of a highly anticipated investigation examining whether former President Donald Trump and his aides violated the law in their efforts to overturn his election defeat.
The report summarizes a two-year grand jury investigation into their actions after Mr. Trump lost the state by a razor-thin margin in 2020.
It states that the grand jury believes certain unnamed witnesses committed perjury by lying on the stand.
Donald Trump was never requested to testify
Yet, the special grand jury interrogated scores of witnesses, including a number of prominent Republicans.
Pages two through seven of the brief report remain withheld from the public. On Thursday, just the introduction, conclusion, and portion detailing perjury concerns were unsealed.
The final portion concludes,
“A majority of the Grand Jury feels that one or more of the witnesses who testified before it may have committed perjury.”
The portions of the report that are not under seal do not reveal which witnesses may have lied under oath.
The 26-member panel also rejected Mr. Trump’s bogus assertions that the election was rigged, concluding “by unanimous vote that no significant fraud occurred in the 2020 Georgia presidential election that might result in the election being overturned.”
The grand jury cannot issue indictments, but it can recommend that the district attorney of the county, Fani Willis, whose office initiated the investigation, do so.
Democrat Ms. Willis has vowed to make a decision shortly. If charges are filed, the public will learn more about the evidence used to support the prosecution’s case at that time.
No official charges have been filed against Mr. Trump or any of his aides to date, and no former US president has ever been indicted.
Mr. Trump said on Thursday on his Truth Social platform that the unsealed portions of the report “had nothing to do with the President because the President did nothing wrong.” He vowed to “always continue pushing for honest elections”
In Georgia, Mr. Trump lost to Joe Biden by 11,779 votes in 2020.
The grand jury investigation into his post-election conduct was prompted by a one-hour phone call between Mr. Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in January 2021, during which the then-president asked Mr. Raffensperger to “find” the exact number of votes he needed to win the election.
Over time, the probe grew to include bogus allegations of election fraud made to state lawmakers as well as a plot to send an alternate slate of Republican electors who gathered in the Georgia Capitol and signed false statements claiming Mr. Trump had won that state.
Mr. Trump, who continues to dispute the results of the 2020 presidential election, has referred to the investigation as a “political witch hunt” and insisted that his conversation with Mr. Raffensperger was “fine.”
Until it was dissolved last month, the grand jury questioned 75 witnesses, including Mr. Trump’s longtime personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham.
Mr. Graham told CNN that he was confident in his testimony and that he had not heard from the district attorney’s office since testifying before the jury.
The grand jury investigation was conducted while US lawmakers investigated Mr. Trump and his allies’ efforts to overturn the election.
A select committee of the US House of Representatives produced a report of over 800 pages declaring that Mr. Trump incited the unrest on 6 January 2021, when his supporters rushed the Capitol as lawmakers met to formalize Mr. Biden’s election.
Also Read: Taylor Kitsch Doesn’t Have Time To Date Or Wed
