Grand Jury in Georgia Trump Inquiry Sees Possible Perjury, but No Vote Fraud

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The reason for the investigation was the call that Mr. Trump made on January 2, 2021, to Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state of Georgia, in which he pressed Mr. Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, to recalculate the results and “find” 11,780 votes, or enough to overturn his state loss.

Mr. Trump, in a statement Thursday, rightly noted that the published excerpts “didn’t even mention President Trump by name.” He said it was his “constitutional duty to ensure the safety, security and integrity of the election,” and that during his “perfect” phone calls to Georgia officials, “no one objected, even slightly protested, or lowered the call.”

But Mr. Raffensperger repeatedly told Mr. Trump on the call that the state results were accurate.

He later wrote in a book that “for the secretary of state’s office to ‘recalculate’ means we have to fudge the numbers. The president is asking me to do something that I know is wrong, and I’m not going to do it.

Legal experts said that some criminal charges could be applied in Georgia at the request of Mr. Trump to Mr. Raffensperger, among them first-degree criminal solicitation to commit election fraud, which is a felony.

But the investigation also looked at many other issues. Another source of potential legal risk for Mr. Trump, experts say, is his direct involvement in recruiting a slate of false presidential electors in the weeks after the 2020 election, a plan that took place even after President Biden prevailed by three different counts. to vote.

“Donald Trump will likely face charges in Georgia,” said Norman Eisen, a lawyer who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee in Mr. Trump’s first impeachment and trial. Trump. He said the jury’s conclusion that there was no widespread election fraud “kills any defense he might have had, any factual or legal defense he might have had for his misconduct.”

Clark D. Cunningham, a law professor at Georgia State University, said “although the portions released today do not name specific people to be charged, the document filed in court today is of historical significance.”

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