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UPDATE (Sept. 8, 2023, 10:20 a.m. ET): The Fulton County special grand jury report was released to the public on Friday morning.
The long-awaited special grand jury report in Georgia is finally set for release on Friday at 10 a.m. ET. It could shed more light on the investigation into potential 2020 election interference in the state as the resulting 19-defendant racketeering case gets underway.
But first, a refresher on what the report is all about and why we haven’t seen it yet — not the full version, anyway.
Remember, there’s a difference between the grand jury that returned the indictment last month and the special grand jury that investigated the matter last year and recommended charges. The special grand jury couldn’t return charges, and it’s unclear exactly what it recommended.
That’s what prompted such intense interest when the special grand jury’s foreperson, Emily Kohrs, spoke to media outlets early this year, after the panel disbanded. Though we could glean clues from her comments — that her panel’s proposal wasn’t a “short list” and included “names that you will recognize” — they weren’t definitive.
As Kohrs broadly forecasted, the 19-defendant indictment returned by the regular grand jury last month charges a long list of people, including several recognizable names — Trump, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Mark Meadows and Sidney Powell among them.
But to what extent did the special grand jury’s suggestions align with the regular grand jury’s indictment?
We don’t know right now. That’s where Friday’s full release of the report can help settle the question once and for all. Because we have the indictment, we can compare it against the report and see how they line up.
And who was on this special grand jury?
Now that we have the indictment, the Fulton County Superior Court judge has apparently decided it’s fair game to release the whole thing.
It was 26 Fulton County residents who were impaneled pursuant to a January 2022 order. Their mandate was to investigate “the facts and circumstances relating directly or indirectly to possible attempts to disrupt the lawful administration of the 2020 elections in the State of Georgia, and to prepare a report on whether anyone should be prosecuted for such potential crimes.”
They were selected in May 2022, and they heard evidence from June through December. They received evidence from or involving 75 witnesses, including poll workers, investigators, technical experts, state employees and people claiming election fraud.
To be sure, the report hasn’t been kept completely in the dark; it was partially released in February. But it has been partially sealed since then, over objection from a media coalition.
That’s because Judge Robert McBurney deferred to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ argument that publicizing potential defendants’ names before her investigation had ended could negatively implicate their rights (and thus her case). Now that we have the indictment, the Fulton County Superior Court judge has apparently decided it’s fair game to release the whole thing.
In an Aug. 28 order signaling the report’s impending full release, the judge wrote:
Much has changed since that February Order was entered. As anyone with an internet connection now knows, the District Attorney has indicted nineteen individuals for their alleged participation in ‘racketeering enterprise’ purportedly designed to interfere with the lawful administration of the 2020 general election in Georgia. This exceedingly public development eliminates the due process concerns that animated the February Order -- at least for any of the nineteen indictees who might have been named in the special purpose grand jury’s final report.
And though the names of recommended defendants weren’t included in February, the partially released report provided some insight into the special grand jurors’ thinking. For example, they reached the following stark conclusion: “We find by a unanimous vote that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election.”
It was a remarkable declaration from a group of ordinary citizens called to service, making that obvious but commonsense statement in the face of Republican-backed lies that the election had been stolen from Trump.
Whatever the rest of the report holds, its full release will further complete the picture of this historic document and proceeding.