ATLANTA – Only portions of a grand jury’s final report on then-President Donald Trump’s alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia will be released to the public, a Fulton County judge ruled Monday.
In an eight-page order, Fulton Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney declared that the nature of the special grand jury investigation raised due process issues for those among Trump and his associates who might be indicted following the conclusion of the probe.
There were no lawyers advocating for any targets of the investigation,” McBurney wrote. “Potential future defendants were not able to present evidence outside the scope of what the district attorney asked them.
“They could not call their own witnesses who might rebut what other state’s witnesses had said and they had no ability to present mitigating evidence. Put differently, there was very limited due process in this process for those who might now be named as indictment worthy in the final report.”
Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis empaneled the special purpose grand jury early last year to investigate whether Trump and/or others unlawfully interfered in Georgia’s election results.
A widely publicized aspect of those efforts was a phone call Republican Trump placed to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in January 2021 urging him to “find” 11,780 votes, the margin Trump needed to carry Georgia’s 16 electoral votes. Raffensperger refused to cooperate, and Congress certified Democrat Joe Biden the winner in Georgia a few days later.
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