Which actions are under investigation?

Willis and her team appear to have zeroed in on these four areas: 1. Trump’s calls to Georgia’s secretary of state, governor, attorney general and state lawmakers. On top of the Jan. 2, 2021, phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) — during which he told the state official to “ find 11,780 votes ” to change the winner of the presidential election in Georgia — Trump also called Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr (R) in early December 2020 urging them to contest the state’s election results in a special session of the state legislature and at the U.S. Supreme Court, respectively. The calls to Kemp and Carr came in the lead-up to Georgia’s pivotal dual Senate runoffs and were organized by then-Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Trump, at the time, also publicly called on state lawmakers and other top officials, including Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R), to support his campaign’s efforts to contest the results. 2. Testimony that Trump allies gave to Georgia state legislators in December 2020. Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and other senior legal advisers presented now-debunked video to lawmakers purporting to show election fraud at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, a 2020 voting location. They also cited an outlandish and illegal theory that urged lawmakers to hold a special session of the legislature to select their own slate of electors in defiance of the election results. It is not a crime to falsely testify before a Georgia legislature, according to legal experts, but prosecutors may find that the false comments were knowingly made in bad faith or that they were part of a coordinated effort to delay or overturn the administration of Georgia’s elections. 3. The scheme the Trump campaign coordinated on Dec. 14, 2020, to certify a slate of fake electors to the electoral college to contest the results of the 2020 election. Text messages obtained by The Washington Post show that the Trump campaign and Georgia Republicans knew the plan was baseless and probably illegal . 4. The election systems breach in Coffee County, Ga., where Trump campaign lawyers worked with a forensic data firm to obtain voter data. As part of a secretive, multistate effort to access voting equipment, the lawyers asked the firm to access a Dominion voting system in this rural county in southern Georgia and copy sensitive data.

What are the possible charges?

Legal experts say Trump or his allies might have broken these Georgia laws: The district attorney is in some uncharted territory when it comes to prosecuting cases under these Georgia statutes. There are no reported appellate cases interpreting the election law statutes that prosecutors are likely to scrutinize, while Georgia’s anti-racketeering law was not necessarily intended for cases of election interference. In 2015, 11 Atlanta educators were convicted on Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) charges for cheating on student standardized tests. Willis was one of the chief prosecutors. That effort underscored both the expansiveness of Georgia’s law, and Willis’s experience in using it in a less traditional way. “Using Georgia’s RICO law for election fraud crimes is a novel, untested argument, which I think, despite getting tossed around by pundits outside of Georgia, is a highly unrealistic probability,” Kreis said. It’s also illegal under federal law to “deprive and defraud” people of a “fair and impartially conducted election process.”

What is a special grand jury and why was one called?

Where regular grand juries determine whether to bring criminal charges in a case, a special grand jury has broad investigative powers to find out whether organized crime is taking place in its community. Willis requested a special grand jury in January 2022 because a “significant number of witnesses and prospective witnesses,” including Raffensperger, “have refused to cooperate with the investigation absent a subpoena requiring their testimony,” according to a January letter Willis sent to Fulton County Superior Court Chief Judge Christopher C. Brasher. Brasher approved the request a week later. Unlike a normal grand jury, a special grand jury does not vote on whether to bring criminal charges. Instead, it could draft a report recommending whether Willis should file charges against Trump or his allies. Should Willis decide to prosecute, a regular grand jury would be called to decide whether to bring charges and in what alleged crimes. A 23-person special grand jury was seated May 2 and given a year to complete its work, which was finalized in early January.

What does the report say?

It is unclear if and when the full report will be released to the public. On Feb. 13, a judge declared that the final report was not a court document and thus lawsuits arguing for its release under that premise were not grounded. The judge further cited due-process concerns about what releasing the document would mean for potential targets of investigation. The court did, however, release the introduction and conclusions of the report, as well as a section that indicated a majority of grand jurors believed that one or more witnesses had perjured themselves before the panel. “A majority of the Grand Jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it,” the report reads. “The Grand Jury recommends that the District Attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling.”

Was Willis kicked off part of the investigation?

On July 25, the judge overseeing the case barred Willis and her staff from building a case against one of the Georgia Republicans implicated in the fake-elector scheme, state Sen. Burt Jones (R), who is the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor. Jones won a motion to disqualify Willis because she hosted a fundraiser for his Democratic opponent, Charlie Bailey. A separate district attorney’s office will now oversee Jones’s role in the case. Willis has continued investigating the other fake electors. On Aug. 16, lawyers for 11 of the GOP electors filed a motion arguing that Willis should be disqualified from overseeing any of their cases, arguing they are “inextricably” tied to Jones.

Who has been subpoenaed?

Prosecutors have said they’ve identified more than 100 people of interest for the special grand jury, while legal analysts have surmised that as many as 50 people could receive subpoenas in the probe. Some of the highest-profile names to have been pursued by investigators include:

Trump was not served a subpoena while the special grand jury was conducting its probe. During a September interview with The Post, Willis did not rule out calling Trump as a witness noting that a decision will “be made late this fall” whether to subpoena the former president. Willis further noted that witnesses of greatest interest to prosecutors are not necessarily high-profile figures or targets of the investigation. “It doesn’t make you the most important witness because you have the most important title or you make the most money. The most important witness is the one who maybe was literally in the room,” Willis told The Post.

Can witnesses avoid testimony?

After Graham was served, his attorneys issued a statement calling the investigation a “fishing expedition” and said the senator would go to court to challenge the subpoena, alleging that any testimony he’d give would be used against Republicans politically. Graham argued the Speech and Debate Clause of the U.S. Constitution shielded him from testifying but lost his case before the U.S. Supreme Court. After multiple appeals in court, the Supreme Court on Nov. 1 ultimately lifted a temporary hold on the subpoena of Graham after hearing arguments from his legal team and Fulton County prosecutors. Failure to comply with a subpoena would lead to monetary sanctions and potentially imprisonment, though the latter is less likely. Duncan, the lieutenant governor, and several members of Georgia’s General Assembly argued that the special grand jury could not ask them to testify, citing legislative immunity. In July, Fulton Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled that Duncan and former state senator William Ligon (R) will have to testify, though the judge will set up a “framework” for what questions investigators are allowed to ask them and other state legislators.

What has been Trump’s response to the probe?

Trump has responded to this investigation the same way he has others scrutinizing him or those close to him, calling it a “witch hunt.” “The young, ambitious, Radical Left Democrat ‘Prosecutor’ from Georgia, who is presiding over one of the most Crime Ridden and Corrupt places in the USA, Fulton County, has put together a Grand Jury to investigate an absolutely ‘PERFECT’ phone call to the Secretary of State,” Trump wrote in a May 31 post on his social network, Truth Social. Trump has doubled down on his false claims of a stolen election. “I called to fight a Rigged & Stolen Election, and they go after me instead of the people that Rigged and Stole it. God Bless America!” he wrote. In January 2021, shortly after Willis launched the inquiry, her office requested security aid from the FBI after Trump called for “the biggest protests we’ve ever had” in cities across the country where he’s being investigated.

What other investigations into Trump are underway?

The Fulton County investigation is far from the only inquiry into Trump’s conduct around the 2020 election or his various business enterprises. There are several investigations at the federal, state and local levels ensnaring Trump’s various business and political enterprises that may bring material legal consequences for the former president. They include investigations into the Trump Organization’s business practices by the New York attorney general and Manhattan district attorney; the tax records of Trump’s golf club in Westchester, N.Y., by the Westchester district attorney; the use of nonprofit funds by the Trump Organization, Trump International Hotel and the former president’s inaugural committee by the D.C. attorney general; and several interlocking investigations by the Justice Department about the Trump White House’s activities surrounding Jan. 6 . The Justice Department is investigating Trump’s actions as part of a criminal probe , four people familiar with the matter tell The Post. The congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack is also squarely interested in Trump’s conduct before and after the riot.

Democracy in America

The Georgia criminal investigation into Trump and his allies, explained

By Matthew Brown

Updated February 16, 2023 at 4:59 p.m. EST|Published July 27, 2022 at 3:05 p.m. EDT

Former president Donald Trump holds a rally in Perry, Ga., on Sept. 25, 2021. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

ATLANTA — Georgia prosecutors could soon announce charges in the criminal investigation into alleged attempts by President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis launched the investigation days after news broke in January 2021 that Trump had tried to pressure the Georgia secretary of state to overturn the 2020 election results. Since then, investigators have identified more than 100 people of interest as they probe what Trump or his allies did in the weeks after the election.

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Willis asked a judge in January 2022 to convene a special grand jury that has broad investigative powers. Starting in May, jurors listened to testimony from dozens of witnesses. They finalized their work in early January and submitted a report, most of which has not yet been made public. Five pages of the report were released Thursday, revealing that a majority of jurors believe that one or more witnesses may have lied under oath and recommend that charges be filed.

Prosecutors are expected to decide in the coming weeks if they will issue criminal charges. In September, Willis told The Washington Post she believes targets of the investigation, if indicted and convicted, may face “prison sentences” given information already obtained by the grand jury.

Here’s what you need to know:

The Jan. 6 insurrection

The report: The Jan. 6 committee released its final report, marking the culmination of an 18-month investigation into the violent insurrection. Read The Post’s analysis about the committee’s new findings and conclusions.

The final hearing: The House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol held its final public meeting where members referred four criminal charges against former president Donald Trump and others to the Justice Department. Here’s what the criminal referrals mean.

The riot: On Jan. 6, 2021, a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 election results. Five people died on that day or in the immediate aftermath, and 140 police officers were assaulted.

Inside the siege: During the rampage, rioters came perilously close to penetrating the inner sanctums of the building while lawmakers were still there, including former vice president Mike Pence. The Washington Post examined text messages, photos and videos to create a video timeline of what happened on Jan. 6. Here’s what we know about what Trump did on Jan. 6.

Jan. 6 committee hearings

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