Georgia case against Donald Trump speeds up: Two witnesses set to testify before grand jury

It’s another decisive week for Donald Trump. In the coming days, the frontrunner to win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination could face his fourth indictment in less than five months over his alleged efforts to interfere in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. For the past two and a half years, Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis has been investigating how Trump and his allies pressured senior state officials to “find” the votes he needed to win in the state. Now Willis will present the case to a grand jury in Atlanta, with two key witnesses, who previously received subpoenas, set to testify on Tuesday. It is the clearest indication that Willis will present her case before a jury ahead of schedule.

The criminal probe in Georgia is a state investigation, just as the New York indictment filed against Trump into hush money paid to a porn star during the 2016 presidential election involves state charges. In the other two indictments against Trump — for withholding classified papers at Mar-a-Lago and for election subversion — the former president is facing federal charges.

Although Willis has avoided commenting on a specific date, sources from her office said on Saturday that she will seek charges by the end of the week. Security measures have visibly increased around the county courthouse, and her team have been working remotely for the past few weeks to limit the risk of possible attacks.

If Trump is charged in Georgia, it would be his fourth indictment in less than five months, and the second stemming from his efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. He was charged August 1 in Washington federal court with orchestrating a multistate conspiracy to reverse the election results, as a result of the investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith, who is also leading the investigation into the classified documents that Trump took to his Florida residence in Mar-a-Lago.

The Georgia indictment may list 20 other defendants. The events date back to the period between November 2020 and early January 2021, when, on Trump’s orders, people from his circle, including his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, maneuvered to overturn the vote in Georgia, which Joe Biden won by a narrow margin. Giuliani recently admitted that he had lied when he claimed that two Georgia election workers committed ballot fraud.

The two witnesses called to testify Tuesday are Republican Geoff Duncan, the former lieutenant governor of Georgia, who has criticized Trump’s false allegations of voter fraud, and freelance journalist, George Chidi. Both confirmed on Saturday that they have been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury on Tuesday in Atlanta. “I’ll certainly answer whatever questions are put in front of me,” Duncan told CNN. Like Duncan, other senior official in the Republican-governed Georgia rejected Trump’s requests, including Governor Brian Kemp, who was reelected last year after becoming one of the most outspoken critics of the false voter fraud allegations.

The main evidence in the indictment is the recording of a call that Trump made on January 2, 2021, to Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state. In the audio, Trump is heard saying: “I just want to find 11,780 votes,” which is one more than the number won by Biden. Trump, who was still president at the time, berated Raffensperger and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if he refused to act. But the secretary of state rejected Trump’s request, arguing that it was based on disproven conspiracy theories. Raffensperger made it clear to Trump that Biden’s victory in Georgia by a margin of 11,779 votes had been legitimate. “The data you have is wrong,” he told Trump.

In addition to the phone call, Willis has examined a breach of election machines in a rural county and a plot to use fake electors in a bid to capture the state’s electoral votes for Trump rather than Biden in Georgia, a swing state that was decisive to Biden’s win. Journalist Chidi wrote about a secret meeting of those electors at the state capitol in December 2020, which is why he has been called to testify.

As with the other cases against him, Trump claims the Georgia investigation is a “witch hunt.” The former president’s legal troubles may be deepening, but he remains the favorite to win the Republican nomination for the White House in 2024.

On Saturday, he traveled to Iowa, which is where the primaries will kick off in January. At the Iowa State Fair — a mix of politics and country music, with barbecues, pig roasts and lots of American flags — Trump outshone the other Republican presidential hopefuls at the event: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump’s closest rival, who is still trailing by 34 points, and Vivek Ramaswamy. Both only managed to attract the attention of a few hundred supporters. Former U.S. ambassador Nikki Haley, who is also in the race, was also at the event, which is a mandatory stop for candidates hoping to win the midwestern state.

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