The 2020 Atlanta prosecutor has filed a petition seeking out-of-state witnesses to testify against Trump and other illegal infractions in the 2020 election

ATLANTA — The Georgia prosecutor investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and others illegally tried to interfere in the 2020 election filed paperwork Friday seeking to compel testimony from a new batch of Trump allies, including former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Compelling testimony from witnesses who don’t live in Georgia requires Willis to use a process that involves getting judges in the states where they live to order them to appear. She filed petitions Friday that are basically going to be used to serve subpoenas.

Flynn didn’t immediately respond to email and phone messages seeking comment, and his lawyer also didn’t immediately return an email seeking comment. Gingrich referred questions to his attorney, who declined to comment. Herschmann could not be reached immediately.

Willis has said she plans to take a monthlong break from public activity in the case leading up to the November midterm election, which is one month from Saturday.

Each of the petitions filed Friday seeks to have the potential witnesses appear in November after the election. But the process for securing testimony from out-of-state witnesses sometimes takes a while, so it appears Willis is putting the wheels in motion for activity to resume after her self-imposed pause.

The petition for Gingrich’s testimony relies on “information made publicly available” by the U.S. House committee that’s investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

He was involved in a plan to run TV ads that perpetuated false claims about fraud in the 2020 election, and encouraged members of the public to contact state officials in order to overturn the election results based on those claims.

The petition says that Gingrich was involved in a plan to have Republican electors sign certificates saying that Joe Biden had won even though he wasn’t.

The petition seeking Flynn’s testimony says he appeared in an interview on conservative cable news channel Newsmax and said Trump “could take military capabilities” and place them in swing states and “basically re-run an election in each of those states.”

He also met with Trump, attorney Sidney Powell and others at the White House on Dec. 18, 2020, for a meeting that, according to news reports, “focused on topics including invoking martial law, seizing voting machines, and appointing Powell as special counsel to investigate the 2020 election,” Willis wrote.

Herschmann, who featured prominently in the House committee hearings on the Capitol attack, was a senior adviser to Trump from August 2020 through the end of his term and “was present for multiple meetings between former President Trump and others related to the 2020 election,” Willis wrote in the petition seeking his testimony.

She identified Penrose as “a cyber investigations, operations and forensics consultant” who worked with Powell and others known to be associated with the Trump campaign in late 2020 and early 2021.

He communicated with Powell about the agreement to hire a data solutions firm, SullivanStrickler, to duplicate data and software from voting system equipment in Coffee County, as well as in Michigan and Nevada. A phone message and email were not immediately responded to by Penrose.

Willis wrote in a petition seeking Lee’s testimony that he was part of an effort to pressure elections worker Ruby Freeman, who was the subject of false claims about election fraud in Fulton County. He could not immediately be reached for comment.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/08/1127637799/flynn-gingrich-testimony-georgia-election-probe

Investigating Special Grand Juries, Senate Subpoenas, and State Senatorial Investigations into a 2016 Undergoing Presidential Correspondence

Special grand juries are impaneled in Georgia to investigate complex cases with a large number of witnesses. Unlike regular juries, they are able to compel evidence and witnesses for questioning and can even ask the target of an investigation to appear.

When its investigation is complete, the special grand jury issues a final report and can recommend action. It’s then up to the district attorney to decide whether to ask a regular grand jury for an indictment.

“That will be something we will be considering tomorrow,” Schiff added, noting that the panel has weighed whether it is better to criminally refer members of Congress to other parts of the federal government or if Congress should “police its own.” It’s possible that congressional mechanisms could include censure and referrals to the Ethics Committee.

California Senator Dianne Feinstein told CNN’s Jake Tapper that she was considering remedies for members of Congress who ignore congressional subpoenas and the fact that the evidence was pertinent to their investigation.

GOP leader Kevin McCarthy and four other Republicans were subpoenaed by the January 6 panel.

The panel is expected to announce it will refer at least three criminal charges against former President Donald Trump to the Justice Department, including insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the federal government, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The impact House referrals could have remains unclear because the Department of Justice special counsel investigation is already examining Trump in its extensive probe into January 6.

But in addition to criminal referrals, January 6 committee Chairman Bennie Thompson told reporters that the panel could issue five to six other categories of referrals, such as ethics referrals to the House Ethics Committee, bar discipline referrals and campaign finance referrals.

“Censure was something that we have considered. Ethics referrals is something we have considered,” Schiff said Sunday, noting that the committee will disclose its decision Monday.

According to multiple sources, the panel is weighing criminal referrals for a number of Trump allies, including former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, former White Housechief of staffMarkMeadows, and former DOJ officialJeffrey Clark.

Schiff reiterated Sunday that he believes there is evidence that Trump committed criminal offenses related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

“This is someone who, in multiple ways, tried to pressure state officials to find votes that didn’t exist. A person tried to interfere with a joint session by inciting a mob at the Capitol. I do not know what is if that is not a crime.

The charge of insurrection is a pretty good match between Donald Trump’s acts and the statutes, according to congressman Adam Schiff who was interviewed by Tapper.

The president has broken multiple criminal laws. And I think you have to be treated like any other American who breaks the law, and that is, you have to be prosecuted,” he said.

— If he is indicted, Trump will still enjoy constitutional protections and the presumption of innocence ahead of any trial. The media will face pressure not to respond to his efforts at inflame the situation at a brittle national moment. A new challenge has been posed to President Joe Biden by the way in which Trump is attempting to portray possible prosecutions against him by the Justice Department as politically motivated weaponizations of justice.

The real estate developer who was a reality show star and former commander in chief is in danger of being disqualified from running in the 2020 election over his handling of classified documents after leaving office. His most immediate exposure may be in the case over a suspected payoff to an adult film star.

A source close to the Trump legal team told CNN that should Trump be indicted, there will not be an arrest or initial appearance before next week. As of Monday night, they did not have any guidance on the timing of a potential indictment beyond that they had been told by Manhattan district attorney’s office that nothing was expected Tuesday.

Multiple people briefed on the matter said that Trump has been scheming to get his base angry and to bring about a change in his mind about having an affair with Daniels.

But the ex-president launched a characteristic effort to discredit attempts to call him to account, trying to intimidate prosecutors, mobilize his grassroots supporters and pressure top GOP officials to rally to his side. The ex-president has a fundamental right to political expression, but his call for his loyalists to protest and take our nation back struck an ominous tone after he showed willingness to use violence to further his interests.

If Trump are indicted for a minor offense, there would be consequences, according to Habba. I think it’s going to cause carnage, Paula. I mean, it’s just a very scary time in our country,” Habba said. She also said that Trump supporters should be peaceful.

— The first Republican nominating contests are nearly a year away, so it’s impossible to judge how GOP primary voters and a national electorate might react to any indictment of the ex-president. Sununu, who has also been considering a presidential run, accused Democrats of building sympathy for Trump with probes like Bragg’s in a way that could “drastically change the paradigm as we go into the ’24 election.” Some voters have already decided that it is time to move on from the drama, chaos and legal thickets thrown up by Trump. The ex-president tried to elevate his supporters into power, which caused Democrats to lose in swing states in last year’s elections. The debate over whether Trump could not win a general election due to his persona and political appeal would be intensified by an indictment.

Trump and his allies in the Republican House leadership have already worked to distract the public from the allegations against him.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Sunday called it “the weakest case out there.” The California Republican, who has instructed GOP-led committees to investigate whether the Manhattan DA used federal funds to probe the hush money payment, said at a news conference that he had already spoken to Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan – who is investigating “the weaponization” of the government against political opponents – about looking into that question.

McCarthy did break with the former president on his calls for protests around any announcement of an indictment, telling reporters, “I don’t think people should protest this, no.” He said that they want calm out there. Nobody hurt, violence or harm to anything else.”

Further underscoring Trump’s firm hold on the GOP base, his social media post prompted several of his Republican critics to line up beside him. It feels like a politically charged prosecution here, according to former vice president Mike Pence, who is considering challenging Trump for the nomination. And I, for my part, I just feel like it’s just not what the American people want to see.”

New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, who has said it is time for Republicans to move on from Trump, told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” the Bragg investigation was “building a lot of sympathy for the former president.” He said that none of the people he had coffee with were big Trump supporters, but they all said that they felt like he was being attacked.

— Any indictment against Trump would be rooted in the principle that no one, not even an ex-president, is above the law. There will be questions about whether the ex-president would get a fair trial given the complex nature of the case and the opinion of some legal experts. His lawyers might argue that someone less famous or politically active would have been treated differently.

— There is also the issue of whether the political division and trauma of putting Trump on trial would be in the wider national interest — at least in a fairly constrained case that seems to hold fewer lasting constitutional implications than those connected to the January 6 investigations. History may not look kindly on any failed prosecution.

The fact that the Daniels case dates back to an election that is now more than six years old, even as the nation faces another White House campaign, could also raise questions for the public, especially given the uncertainty about the case for anyone outside the small bubble of the investigation. Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” on Sunday that “nobody in our nation is or should be above the law.” But he also said: “I would hope that, if they brought charges, that they have a strong case, because this is … unprecedented. And there are certainly risks involved here.”

Kelly’s comment emphasized how Trump, nearly eight years after he burst onto the scene with an upstart presidential campaign, is again shattering convention about the role of presidents and ex-presidents in national life. He might be about to move to the center of the political debate and national consciousness, in the most vehement ways.

CNN looked at the legal drama surrounding Donald Trump. CNN Primetime: Inside the Trump Investigation is on Tuesday, March 21 at 9 p.m.

Officials in New York and Washington, DC, are preparing for potential protests as a grand jury empaneled as part of the investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged role in a scheme to pay hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels continues to weigh possible charges.

In New York City – where the grand jury has been meeting – all NYPD officers are expected to be in uniform and ready for deployment Tuesday, according to an internal memo that a source shared with CNN. Law enforcement officials tell CNN that there is no credible threat on Tuesday.

The memo was issued in response to the social media posts that called on his supporters to protest, just as he did in Washington, DC when his supporters protested in response to his election loss. The intelligence assessment obtained by CNN stated that the US Capitol Police force is not currently tracking any threats to the US Capitol.

A letter to Bragg against a possible prosecution for violating the civil liberties of the U.S. District Attorney, David Cohen, and the state attorney in New York

Cohen made himself available as a rebuttal witness, but was not needed according to a statement provided by his lawyer.

The chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and the chair of the House Oversight committee, Jim Comer, R- Ky., sent a letter to Bragg on Monday demanding documents, communications, and testimony related to him.

A person for Bragg said the district attorney’s team would not be intimidated by attempts to undermine the justice process and that they would not let unjust accusations deter them from applying the law.

We follow the law in every prosecution, even if we don’t like it. The lawyers are hard at work, according to the spokesman.

The three chairmen called a possible indictment “an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority” and said it was based on “a novel legal theory untested anywhere in the country and one that federal authorities declined to pursue.”

They expect him to appear soon before Congress but they don’t have a date for the hearing. They gave Bragg a deadline of Thursday to respond to them to set up a possible appearance.

The former president is dominating the conversation at the House Republicans’ annual retreat, which is happening in Florida.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy fielded several questions about Trump at a press conference Sunday evening, and largely focused his response on attacking Bragg’s tenure and legal approach, instead of defending Trump’s behavior.

McCarthy said the reason they won races in New York was due to the district attorney not protecting the citizens of New York. There is no statute of limitations anymore. He added about an indictment: “This will not hold up in court, if this is what he wants to do.”

Bragg’s probe? The first question about Gimenez’s time in the White House: “It certainly smells like it’s political”

During his time in the White House, questions about Trump were front and center as House Republicans tried to prove their legislative agenda.

At a bilingual press conference with Hispanic Republicans Monday morning, the first question was about Bragg’s probe. Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., used the same refrain most GOP lawmakers have used, telling reporters, “It certainly smells like it’s political.”