A Georgia grand jury, which investigated former President Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 state election, returned at least one indictment on Monday, though it was not immediately possible to know who was against whom.
Fulton County prosecutors did not immediately confirm who the accused was and on what basis, but the existence of indictments emerged around 9 p.m. when officials from the clerk’s office presented a court package to the judge who had presided over the grand jury investigation for months. of documents in a courtroom full of reporters awaiting news.
Inside the courtroom, cameras broadcast live the movements of the judge and other county officials, but no one said when the indictment would be issued.
The grand jury heard witnesses Monday night in an investigation into Donald Trump’s election sabotage, a long day of testimony punctuated by a vague, terse appearance on the county’s website of a list of criminal charges against the former president that prosecutors later denied.
Fulton County prosecutors have presented evidence to the grand jury as they press for a possible indictment, calling several former state officials, including the former lieutenant governor, as witnesses.
But the process hit an unexpected snag in the middle of the day, when Reuters reported a document laying criminal charges against Donald Trump, including charges of racketeering, conspiracy to commit false statements, and a public official request for breach of oath.
Reuters, which later published a copy of the document, said the recording was promptly removed. A spokesman for Fulton County District Attorney Fanny Willis said the indictment report was “inaccurate” but declined to comment further.
Integrity of the investigation
Trump’s legal team was quick to attack the integrity of the investigation.
The Fulton County Clerk of Courts’ office then issued a statement that only seemed to raise more questions, describing the released document as “fictional” but not explaining how it ended up in court.
Donald Trump and his allies, who have called the investigation politically biased, immediately seized on the apparent error to claim the process was fraudulent. Mr. Trump’s campaign sought to raise money by mistake, sending an email containing the since-deleted document.
“Grand jury testimony is not over – but the attorney general has clearly already decided how this case will end,” Donald Trump wrote in the email, which included links to donate money to his campaign. “It is an absolute disgrace.”
Trump’s legal team stressed that this was not “just an administrative error”. Instead, it was “symbol of the rampant and egregious constitutional violations that have plagued this case from its inception,” said attorneys Drew Findling, Jennifer Little and Marissa Goldberg.
It was not clear why the list was released while grand jurors are still hearing witnesses in the main investigation into steps Trump and others took in their efforts to overturn his narrow loss in Georgia to Democrat Joe Biden.
It was also not clear if the grand jurors knew the case had been posted online. They will still need to vote on the charges, so the charges listed in the post may or may not ultimately go to Donald Trump.
Legal experts said it was likely a clerical error in listing the charges that prosecutors intend to ask the grand jury to vote on. Prosecutors write indictments and submit them to a grand jury, which ultimately decides whether to pursue charges.
