According to a recent court filing, the special grand jury in the Atlanta area that was looking into whether former President Donald Trump and his allies broke the law in their attempts to rig the 2020 election has finished its work.
Judge Robert McBurney, who has been presiding over the Fulton County special grand jury investigation, wrote in the brief court document on Monday, “Given the special purpose grand jury’s delivery of its final report, the undersigned’s recommendation, and the Superior Court bench’s vote, it is the ORDER of this court that the special purpose grand jury now stands DISSOLVED.”
Georgia does not allow special grand juries to indict people. Nevertheless, the panel will produce a final report that will be used by the special grand jury to make recommendations regarding whether Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis should seek indictments in her investigation into election interference. After that, Willis can ask a regularly constituted grand jury to indict him.
Willis has already spent more than a year investigating Trump and his associates, beginning her investigation in early 2021, shortly after a January call became public in which Trump pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the votes Trump needed to win the Peach State in the presidential election.
Her investigation has grown to include false claims of election fraud to state lawmakers, the fake elector scheme, unauthorized individuals attempting to access voting machines in one Georgia county, and threats and harassment of election workers.
McBurney has scheduled a hearing for the Fulton County District Attorney’s office and others on January 24 to argue whether the special grand jury’s report should be made public. According to McBurney, the special purpose grand jury recommended that its final report be made public.