Trump’s “Find the Votes” Call to Georgia May Be About to Bite Him in the Ass

Hey, remember when Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, but refused to admit it? And, among other things, pressured local officials to just change their results in his favor? Including calling Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger and demanding the guy simply “find” the 11,780 votes necessary for him to beat Joe Biden there? And suggesting something bad might happen to Raffensperger if he didn’t follow through on the demand? It turns out Georgia prosecutors think all that is worth looking into.

A district attorney in Atlanta on Thursday asked a judge to convene a special grand jury to help investigate former president Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. The request from the district attorney in Fulton County, Fani T. Willis, whose inquiry is seen by legal experts as potentially perilous for the former president, had been expected because crucial witnesses had refused to participate voluntarily—as has been the case with many investigations into Mr. Trump’s actions. A grand jury could issue subpoenas compelling them to provide information. The distinction of a special grand jury is that it would focus exclusively on the Trump investigation, whereas regular grand juries handle many cases and cannot spend as much time on a single one. The Georgia case is one of two active criminal investigations known to involve the former president and his circle; the other is an examination of his financial dealings by the Manhattan district attorney.

“The District Attorney’s Office has received information indicating a reasonable probability that the State of Georgia’s administration of elections in 2020, including the State’s election of the President of the United States, was subject to possible criminal disruptions,” Willis wrote in the letter to Christopher Brasher, the chief judge of the Fulton County Superior Court. (Representatives for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Times.)

Last October, Raffensperger told NBC News he would “gladly participate” in an interview with the Fulton County district attorney, though, according to Willis, he is one of the individuals who has refused to cooperate without a subpoena. In his book, Integrity Counts, Raffensperger made it clear that he believed Trump threatened him over while demanding he magically come up with the exact number of votes he would need to flip Georgia’s election.

Last year, Willis said she would consider racketeering charges in the Georgia inquiry, among other things. An analysis by the Brookings Institution—which the Fulton County D.A.’s office has studied, according to the Times—concluded that Trump’s actions in Georgia put him at “substantial risk of possible state charges predicated on multiple crimes,” including “criminal solicitation to commit election fraud; intentional interference with performance of election duties; conspiracy to commit election fraud; criminal solicitation; and state RICO violations.” In an interview with the Times last year, Willis said, “Anything that is relevant to attempts to interfere with the Georgia election will be subject to review.… An investigation is like an onion. You never know. You pull something back, and then you find something else.”

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