Fulton County prosecutors are asking the public to wait a little longer to review the final report issued by a special grand jury that investigated interference in Georgia’s 2020 election.
With just weeks until Fulton District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to seek indictments against former President Donald Trump and others, her office asked the Georgia Court of Appeals on Monday to block release of the report “at least until final charging decisions have been made.” In their report, the grand jurors recommended multiple people be criminally charged, several members previously told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Donald Wakeford, one of Willis’s deputies, wrote, “if a special purpose grand jury’s report, requested by and intended for a district attorney’s evaluation, became a presumptively public court record with immediate effect, a prosecutor’s use of a special purpose grand jury would risk revealing information which would otherwise remain protected until the termination of the case in any other criminal investigatory context.”
The filing came in response to an appeal filed by a coalition of media organizations, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which argued that the report was a court record subject to disclosure and that the public interest demanded that the full document be released. The outlets asked the court to overturn a February decision from Fulton Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney in which he ruled that the rights of future defendants needed to be protected, even though grand jurors had requested that their recommendations be made public.
“There was very limited due process in this process for those who might now be named as indictment-worthy in the final report,” McBurney wrote.
The special grand jury met for nearly eight months between May 2022 and January 2023, hearing testimony from about 75 witnesses and collecting evidence for Willis. The investigative body did not have the power to issue indictments.
In February, McBurney released a redacted portion of the final report, which excluded the special grand jury’s list for who should be charged with various state crimes.
The redacted version of the report did include a few notable disclosures, including that jurors were in unanimous agreement that there was no evidence of widespread fraud in Georgia’s 2020 elections. It also stated that a majority of jurors had recommended that prosecutors pursue perjury charges against at least one witness they believe lied under oath in their testimony.
Willis has heavily implied she will indict Trump and others next month and urged law enforcement to prepare because her decision could “provoke a significant public reaction.” Two regular grand juries were seated earlier this month that are expected to consider any would-be charges.
Joining the AJC in the media coalition are: The Associated Press; Bloomberg; CMG Media Group and its station WSB-TV; CNN; Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Wall Street Journal; The E.W. Scripps Co. on behalf of Scripps News; Gray Media Group and its station WANF; The New York Times; and Tegna and its station WXIA-TV.