Georgia is a state where prosecutors seeking an indictment can present hearsay evidence to grand juries. That means the special grand jury currently underway in Atlanta can be shown how former Attorney General Bill Barr and others repeatedly told Trump that his election conspiracy theories were absolute nonsense—laying the groundwork to prove that he knowingly cited false accusations of election fraud when he intimidated Georgia’s secretary of state on Jan. 2, 2021.
According to a person familiar with the inner workings of the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, prosecutors from the start have closely examined whether Trump and his lieutenants could be charged with breaking a Georgia state law against “criminal solicitation to commit election fraud.” Investigators could charge them if they find that any member of Trump’s team “solicits, requests, commands, importunes” or tries to get Georgia officials to “engage” in election fraud on the several recorded phone calls they made to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger or his agency’s top investigator.
Prosecutors would have a hard time proving that Trump was engaging in a crime if he truly believed that there was actual fraud in Georgia, lawyers told The Daily Beast.
But in recent weeks, the Jan. 6 Committee’s half-dozen hearings have laid that to rest, playing video testimony from Trump advisers who recalled telling the commander-in-chief that the conspiracy theories were baseless.
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