A judge in Atlanta is expected to release portions of a report on Thursday detailing the findings of a special purpose grand jury that examined whether former President Donald J. Trump and some of his allies violated Georgia law in their efforts to overturn Mr. Trump\u2019s 2020 election loss in the state.<\/p>\n
Special grand juries cannot issue indictments, but they can recommend whether criminal charges should be sought. Earlier this week, Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court ruled that much of the jury\u2019s final report should not be disclosed until after Fani T. Willis, the local district attorney, makes her own charging decisions.<\/p>\n
Still, he ordered the report\u2019s introduction and conclusion to be made public, along with a section detailing the special grand jury\u2019s concerns about witnesses lying under oath. <\/p>\n
Judge McBurney wrote that revealing the grand jury\u2019s specific recommendations now would create \u201cdue process deficiencies\u201d that would be unfair to anyone who might be \u201cnamed as indictment-worthy in the final report.\u201d But legal experts say the judge\u2019s decision to keep much of the report secret strongly suggests that the special grand jury determined that someone deserves to be indicted.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re at the cusp of something consequential, I think,\u201d said Clark D. Cunningham, a professor at Georgia State University College of Law, who has been following the case closely.<\/p>\n
Ms. Willis\u2019s office has been conducting the investigation for the last two years. Much of it \u2014 including interviews with dozens of witnesses \u2014 was conducted before the special grand jury, which under Georgia law had to issue a final report on its findings.<\/p>\n
Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump\u2019s former personal lawyer, and David Shafer, the head of the Georgia Republican Party, are among those who were told that they were targets of the inquiry who could face criminal charges. Other witnesses who appeared before the special grand jury include Senator Lindsey Graham and Georgia\u2019s governor, Brian Kemp.<\/p>\n
In his ruling earlier this week, Judge McBurney said the special grand jury raised concerns in its report \u201cthat some witnesses may have lied under oath during their testimony.\u201d While his eight-page ruling included few other revelations, it did indicate that the special grand jury\u2019s findings are serious. The report includes \u201ca roster of who should (or should not) be indicted, and for what, in relation to the conduct (and aftermath) of the 2020 general election in Georgia,\u201d Judge McBurney wrote.<\/p>\n
The seriousness of the investigation has been clear for some time. Last January, in seeking a special grand jury, Ms. Willis told a judge that her office had concluded that there was \u201ca reasonable probability\u201d that the state\u2019s administration of the 2020 election \u201cwas subject to possible criminal disruptions.\u201d<\/p>\n
The catalyst for the investigation was a phone call Mr. Trump made to Georgia\u2019s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, on Jan. 2, 2021, asking him to recalculate the election results and \u201cfind\u201d the nearly 12,000 votes Mr. Trump would have needed to win the state\u2019s electoral votes. Mr. Trump also suggested that failing to act on the fraud he falsely claimed had occurred could constitute \u201ca criminal offense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Raffensperger, in a book later that year, wrote, \u201cFor the office of the secretary of state to \u2018recalculate\u2019 would mean we would somehow have to fudge the numbers. The president was asking me to do something that I knew was wrong, and I was not going to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another area of scrutiny is a strategy the Trump team devised to have Trump supporters in states that the president lost act as if they were official Electoral College delegates, an attempt to circumvent voters. Evidence has emerged, including from the recent report by the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, suggesting that Mr. Trump was not on the periphery of the plan, but at the center of it.<\/p>\n
Court records show that the special grand jury scrutinized other actions taken by Trump supporters in Georgia after the election, including an alleged plot to pressure an election worker in Fulton County to falsely admit that she committed fraud and an election data breach in rural Coffee County, Ga., carried out by a separate group of Trump allies.<\/p>\n