“A criminal investigation into … Trump’s attempts to overturn” Georgia’s election results “is set to intensify this week as a grand jury convenes, offering the local district attorney her first shot at seeking subpoenas for records and interviews,” CNN reported on Friday, March 5, 2021. Read story here.
The network previously reported, in early February, that Georgia prosecutors had opened a “criminal investigation into Trump’s attempt to influence election results.” Read that earlier story here.
The specific conduct they’re looking at is Trump’s phone call to Georgia’s secretary of state demeaning he find enough votes to flip the election in that state, which Biden won. That call — and there’s no question it occurred — was obviously corrupt, and may have been a crime.
A grand jury could indict Trump after reviewing the evidence. Prosecutors have said no Georgia officials are targets of the investigation. But the D.A. has said the investigation will cover more than Trump’s call and “include any efforts to influence the election in Georgia,” according to CNN. The grand jury is seated in Fulton County, home of Atlanta and the State Capitol.
Legal experts consider the Georgia case a genuine legal threat to Trump. It ought to be. (Click on image to make him boogie-woogie behind bars.) His brazen assault on democracy is unprecedented in American history. Even the Confederate secessionists didn’t try to overthrow an election or install a dictator over the United States; they only tried to leave the Union and go their own way.
But I’m skeptical whether, in our deeply polarized society, a jury can be seated which doesn’t have at least one pro-Trump partisan who will refuse to convict him no matter what he did or what the evidence shows. When people are loyal to a man, not the nation, the ability of our legal system to function begins to break down.