GOP FAKE ELECTORS: TARGETS IN GEORGIA ELECTION FRAUD

 

…Giuliani has been in multiple videos showing him trying to reverse the 2020 election results

 

Giuliani and Senator Lindsay Graham are both required to testify in Georgia

 

After what Rudy Giuliani has tried to do to get Trump reinstated as the U.S. President, It’s hard to believe that after the 9/11 attack, as the Mayor of New York City, he was referred to as “America’s Mayor”.

Today, the prosecutors in Fulton County, Ga., have told Rudy Giuliani’s lawyers that he is now a target of their ongoing criminal probe.  His efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election is the actual crime probe, a Giuliani lawyer said..

Attorney Robert Costello said lawyers for the former New York Mayor were told by the office of Fulton County, District Attorney Fani Willis on Monday that Giuliani is a target of the ongoing probe, signaling that he could be indicted if the case moves forward. Giuliani has served as a lawyer for former president Donald Trump, and was one of the leaders of the effort to overturn the 2020 vote.

Costello said he and Giuliani “plan to be in Atlanta on Wednesday” to testify as scheduled before the special grand jury that has been hearing the case. Giuliani is considered a key witness in the sprawling inquiry.

The targeting of Giuliani is just the latest example of Willis moving aggressively with her probe.

D.A. Willis also won a federal court victory Monday in a related matter involving U.S. Senator, Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who a judge ruled must testify in the case

In recent weeks and months, Willis has pushed to get high-profile witnesses to appear under oath in an inquiry that may represent the most immediate legal threat to Trump among a thicket of interconnected federal, state, local and congressional probes.

Giuliani had sought to delay or avoid travel to Atlanta to testify, citing recent surgery to have heart stents implanted. Last week, he provided the court with details from his personal physician explaining why the former New York mayor was at risk to travel by air. For whatever reason, Giuliani’s team Monday abandoned efforts to reschedule his testimony. “We are not going to deal with this postponement issue anymore,” Costello said.

Although he will appear at the Fulton County courthouse this week, it’s not clear if Giuliani will have much to say. Costello said Giuliani plans to cite attorney-client privilege if asked about his interactions with the former president regarding the 2020 election. He could follow the example of other targets in this case and decline to answer questions based on the constitutional protection against self-incrimination.

In the Graham case, a federal judge already denied the senator’s request to toss out his subpoena from the Georgia prosecutor, signaling that he must testify in the probe. The original subpoena to Graham called for him to testify Aug. 23, though that date may be pushed back as Graham’s office announced plans to appeal the decision.

Graham had argued that he should be exempt from testifying because of speech or debate clause protections, sovereign immunity and his position as a high-ranking government official. The U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May rejected all three of Graham’s arguments.

“The Court finds that the District Attorney has shown extraordinary circumstances and a special need for Senator Graham’s testimony on issues relating to alleged attempts to influence or disrupt the lawful administration of Georgia’s 2022 elections,” the judge wrote.

Democrat Joe Biden won Georgia by nearly 12,000 votes, flipping the state after a long string of Republican victories in presidential elections.  (The Georgia election ballots have been re-counted multiple times and have been certified by the state.)

(Millions of Americans have all seen the video of the president trying to get the Georgia Secretary of State to “Find the votes to reverse the election.”)

The D. A. Willis’ probe began after the video and the reports that Trump, and his allies, had placed calls to Georgia officials seeking to overturn state election results. It expanded to include efforts, of which Giuliani was a part, to send the names of Trump electors in multiple states to Washington in hopes of delaying or halting the certification of a Biden electoral victory.

Willis requested a special grand jury this year. It began meeting in June and has identified more than 100 people of interest. The panel has heard testimony from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) and his staff, Georgia Attorney General Christopher M. Carr (R), state lawmakers and local election workers.

Graham is of interest to the committee for phone calls he made to Raffensperger about Georgia’s election system. D.A. Willis claims Graham made multiple phone calls to Raffensperger and his staff after the election requesting that they reexamine certain absentee ballots “to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former president Donald Trump.” Graham’s legal team has denied any wrongdoing and said his testimony was sought as a witness.

In a statement released Monday, Graham’s office again cited the Constitution’s speech or debate clause to argue that it “prevents a local official from questioning a Senator about how that Senator did his job” and said he would appeal the judge’s ruling to the circuit court.

“Here, Senator Graham was doing his due diligence before the Electoral Count Act certification vote, where he voted to certify the election,” the statement said. “Although the district court acknowledged that Speech or Debate may protect some of Senator Graham’s activities, she nevertheless ignored the constitutional text and binding Supreme Court precedent.”

Graham’s lawyers previously said their client’s calls about reexamining specific absentee ballots after Trump’s loss weren’t an effort to interfere in the 2020 presidential election.

Graham’s legal team has been led by former Trump White House counsel: Donald McGahn.

Willis named Graham, who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, as part of her inquiry into what she has deemed “a multistate, coordinated plan by the Trump Campaign to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere.”

The case covers some of the matters reviewed by the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and by the Justice Department inquiry examining efforts to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. But D.A. Willis, has been at the forefront in publicly pursuing a criminal case, in part because she is able to take advantage of state statutes that legal experts say could make a criminal prosecution faster and less cumbersome than a federal case.

She has subpoenaed more than three dozen individuals,  including a group of Georgia Republicans she has identified as “targets of the criminal probe for their role as purported Trump electors.”

D.A. Willis has not ruled out calling Trump as a witness, telling an Atlanta TV station recently that “we are at least 60 days away before I even have to make that kind of decision.”

This case will get much more interesting in 60 days.

Copyright G. Ater 2022