Georgia Grand Jury Would Have Invited Mike Flynn And Lindsey Graham To The Indictment Party

It's your lucky day, Senator!

This morning we got a further peek behind the scenes of the Fulton County RICO indictment, and, hey, turns out, it could have been much worse! Particularly for three current or former US senators who ran their mouths about non-existent fraud in the Peach State.

Georgia has a unique procedure for investigating public corruption through a pre-grand jury body known as a special purpose grand jury (SPGJ). The SPGJ cannot issue an indictment, but rather produces a report, which prosecutors then take to a regular grand jury to bring charges. In this case, the SPJG concluded its investigation into election interference in 2022 back in January, but the report remained sealed while the regular grand jury did its work this summer. But now that we’ve all seen the RICO indictment against Donald Trump and 19 codefendants, the earlier report has finally been made public.

A majority of jurors voted to recommend an indictment of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham and former Georgia Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue in the RICO conspiracy to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory in the state. The 24-member panel would have added an additional false statements charge against Perdue “with respect to the persistent, repeated communications directed to multiple Georgia officials and employees between November of 2020 and January of 2021.”

In the event, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis declined to indict the legislators, presumably because they have a pretty strong claim of immunity under the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause. In fact, Graham litigated the issue when he was trying to evade the subpoena to testify, and got at least some support for his position from the Eleventh Circuit.

Similarly, DA Willis did not accept the SPGJ’s recommendation to charge former state Senator William Ligon, who chaired a meeting of the state Judiciary Subcommittee on Dec. 3, 2020, so that Rudy Giuliani could air nonsensical claims about election fraud, including false accusations about Atlanta poll workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss. (After refusing to comply with discovery, Giuliani recently defaulted in a defamation suit brought by Freeman and Moss.)

And while the special purpose grand jury would have indicted all of the cosplay electors, DA Willis appears to have flipped some number of them on the ringleaders, only charging former Georgia GOP chair David Shafer, state Senator Shawn Still, and former Coffee County GOP chair Cathy Latham, who was involved in the breach of voting machines in her district.

Multiple commentators (myself included) have criticized the DA for bringing a needlessly complicated and wide-ranging indictment. We’re already seeing the case fractured, as some defendants assert their speedy trial rights, and others move to get their cases heard in federal court. But the SPGJ report shows just how much Willis pared down from her original investigation. In fact, the panel would have charged 31 defendants in the conspiracy, including Michael Flynn, Trump’s consigliere Boris Epshteyn, and attorneys Lin Wood and Cleta Mitchell.

Currently, attorneys Sidney Powell and Ken Chesebro, the two defendants who demanded to be tried immediately, want to question the regular jurors in hopes of discovering some procedural defect that might moot the indictment. Trump himself made several attempts to bone the investigation by claiming that the SPGJ was corrupt, or even that the special purpose grand jury law itself is unconstitutional. So far, none of it has worked. But you can bet your bottom dollar that this shit isn’t over. We’re talking about people who forced two innocent poll workers to go into hiding for their own safety.

And right on cue, the witness tamperer in chief has logged in:

The Georgia Grand Jury report has just been released. It has ZERO credibility and badly taints Fani Willis and this whole political Witch Hunt. Essentially, they wanted to indict anybody who happened to be breathing at the time. It totally undermines the credibility of the findings, and badly hurts the Great State of Georgia, whose wonderful and patriotic people are not happy with this charade of an out of control “prosecutor” doing the work of, and for, the DOJ. ELECTION INTERFERENCE!

It’s gonna be awesome in 2026 when Governor Brian Kemp runs against Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff and Trump kneecaps him in the primary and saddles the Georgia GOP with some MAGA loon to keep that seat blue forever.

Catch Liz Dye on Opening Arguments podcast.

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