A promotora que supervisiona a investigação sobre os esforços do ex-presidente Donald Trump para anular a eleição de 2020 pode enfrentar talvez a maior decisão de sua carreira nos próximos dias, já que uma juíza da Geórgia considerará na terça-feira se deve tornar público um relatório especial do grande júri sobre o assunto.
O promotor distrital do condado de Fulton, Fani Willis, recebeu há duas semanas as conclusões do grande júri de propósito especial, um corpo de investigação que pode recomendar acusações, mas não pode indiciar. O relatório do painel segue uma investigação de meses que incluiu depoimentos de dezenas de testemunhas.
Willis, que deve comparecer ao tribunal na terça-feira para a audiência perante o juiz do Tribunal Superior do Condado de Fulton, Robert McBurney, permaneceu de boca fechada sobre as possíveis ações que seu escritório tomará. Seu escritório pode apresentar acusações criminais decorrentes das conclusões do relatório, possivelmente incluindo acusações contra Trump.
Nenhum ex-presidente foi indiciado na história americana.
Se Willis apresentar acusações contra o ex-presidente - e atual candidato à indicação de 2024 - ela poderá ser posicionada para montar uma acusação de alto nível em um tribunal do condado que anteriormente permitia câmeras e cobertura de televisão ao vivo. O potencial para se tornar um fascinante espetáculo nacional, ou mesmo um circo, é difícil de ignorar.
Among different matters, the investigation centered on a Jan. 2, 2021, cellphone call in which Trump told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, "I simply want to find 11,780 votes, that is one greater than we've." In addition to Trump, Willis' office has indicated others have also confronted criminal scrutiny within the probe, including a set of sixteen Georgia Republicans who participated in an exchange elector scheme, and previous Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, consistent with courtroom filings.
State and federal officers interviewed for the research include Raffensperger, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally of Trump.
Attorneys for Trump stated in an emailed assertion that they "will no longer be gift nor participating in Tuesday's listening to.
"To date, we've got in no way been part of this technique. The grand jury forced the testimony of dozens of other, regularly excessive-ranking, officials at some point of the research, however in no way discovered it important to talk with the President," said the attorneys Drew Findling, Marissa Goldberg and Jennifer Little. "He was by no means subpoenaed nor asked to are available voluntarily by this grand jury or all people inside the Fulton County District Attorney's Office. Therefore, we will anticipate that the grand jury did their process and looked at the records and the law, as we've got, and concluded there have been no violations of the law with the aid of President Trump."
The Fulton County research, and the choices Willis makes on any prices, can be her maximum particularly-scrutinized movements in the years she's served as district lawyer and 17 years she previously served as a prosecutor in that workplace.
Willis graduated from Howard University in Washington, D.C., in 1992 and Emory University School of Law in 1996. She started out running in the Fulton County District Attorney's Office in 2001 and climbed the ranks over nearly a long time, serving in almost every department of the office. She become lead prosecutor in over 100 jury trials and prosecuted hundreds of homicide and other excessive-profile instances.
"The quality trial lawyers have an capacity to take a complicated set of statistics, ingest them quick and straight away perceive the issues which might be going to be the crux," stated former prosecutor Charlie Bailey, who worked under Willis for four years. "She [has] that capacity in spades."
Bailey said Willis changed into a person who younger prosecutors in Fulton County sought out for her unfiltered advice.