Prosecutorial ‘decisions are imminent’: Fulton County DA argues against releasing grand jury report in Trump case

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was in court on Tuesday to announce the official findings of the special grand jury and submit the final report.

The jurors in the special grand jury voted to release the final report to the public, but it's unclear if Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney will allow it. The findings in the report will make recommendations on targets for further investigation or indictment, but that will not be decided until a full grand jury is established.

At the start of the hearing, Willis told the judge that she would urge the judge not to publish the full report yet. She explained that if the report is released defendants might make arguments about their ability to get a fair trial. She wants to ensure that any future defendants want to be treated fairly.

She made it clear that prosecutorial “decisions are imminent.”

As a "special purpose grand jury" the panel doesn't have the ability to indict, only to report and refer. The next steps could be for a full grand jury to be impaneled that would issue the indictments.

There have been questions about whether the jurors would consider more targeted charges to individuals like Donald Trump, or if it would be a kind of group charge using the state's racketeering laws.

As Raw Story explained Monday, there is an indication that the DA could choose the racketeering case. The Atlantic's David Graham wrote that Willis had a "fondness" for that kind of case. It was evident when Willis hired Atlanta lawyer John Floyd, who not only wrote a book on racketeering cases, but has prosecuted the top ones in Georgia for the past two decades.

The former president has already spent the week railing about the case on his personal social media site. In one case on Tuesday, he proclaimed he "won Georgia by a lot!" Evidence in the House Select Committee investigating Jan. 6 and the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election found that Trump was told over and over by multiple officials, aides, advisers and lawyers that he'd lost the state.

In a release to the public Monday, Trump's lawyers said that it's clear the grand jury found nothing was wrong, otherwise they would have called the ex-president in for questioning. That isn't entirely true given it is a "special" grand jury and not the full grand jury. If he was a target they also might not call him in for questioning.

Brandon Van Grack, a Justice Department lawyer who helped with special counsel Robert Mueller's efforts, explained in the Trump documents case that if Trump was the target the prosecutors likely wouldn't call him in for questioning.

"So, the reality is if he is the target of an investigation, there isn't going to be an interview," Van Grack explained. "And we do know from the information that you discussed at the top of the hour that there is discussion in the government's recent filing in terms of the decision not to unseal the affidavit that there are witnesses who are cooperating with the investigation. Specifically, say that's a basis for not unsealing the affidavit. So, there are certainly people in the orbit that would have information that would be relevant to understanding the intent and motive."