Georgia prosecutor investigating Trump-led attempts to reverse election asks for grand jury

The district attorney of Fulton County, Georgia currently investigating former President Donald Trump’s attempts to reverse the results of the 2020 election in the state has asked for a special grand jury to help her investigation.

District Attorney Fani Willis made the request in a letter she wrote on Thursday to the chief judge of Fulton County’s Superior Court. 

Fulton County is the most populous county in the state and is home to Georgia’s capital, Atlanta. But the county is also home to the center of Trump’s campaign to flip the results of the presidential race there. Joe Biden became the first Democrat to win the state since 1992, only doing so by an extremely narrow margin.

In her letter, Willis, a Democrat, cited a lack of cooperation from witnesses, including the Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger. She said the witnesses “refused to cooperate with the investigation absent a subpoena requiring their testimony.”

The special grand jury would be empaneled for a longer period of time than normal and would focus only on the case, although it would not be able to issue indictments.

The inquiry began last February, centered around a January 2 call from last year between Trump and Raffensperger. Trump had asked him to “find 11,780 votes” that made up Biden’s winning margin in the state, but Raffensperger refused.

Earlier this month, Willis had said her team was making progress in the case but that it was not rushing things. “I believe in 2022 a decision will be made in that case,” she said. “I certainly think that in the first half of the year that decisions will be made.”

In his own statement on Thursday afternoon, Trump claimed he “didn’t say anything wrong” in his “perfect” call with Raffensperger. He reiterated his claims of election fraud, saying the special grand jury “should be looking into … the large scale voter fraud that took place in Georgia.”