More tidbits from the Georgia special grand jury

Five jurors spoke to the Atlanta Journal Constitution after their foreperson, Emily Kohrs spilled the beans, generally because they thought she made them sound unserious.  (I can't argue with that.)

One [detail] was that they had heard a recording of a phone call Trump placed to late Georgia House Speaker David Ralston in which the president asked the fellow Republican to convene a special session of the legislature to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s narrow victory in Georgia.

  Atlanta Journal Constitution

I suppose Trump will now tell us that was a "perfect call."

The speaker “basically cut the president off. He said, ‘I will do everything in my power that I think is appropriate.’ … He just basically took the wind out of the sails,” the juror said. “‘Well, thank you,’ you know, is all the president could say.”

[...]

Prosecutors generally took the lead on questioning witnesses and recommending who to subpoena, but jurors would step in to ask their own questions. Jurors said prosecutors took pains not to give their opinions, only offering guidance on what was illegal under the law. Several jurors said prosecutors never tipped their hand about who might be charged.

[...]

“I was pretty emotional throughout the whole thing,” a juror said. “I wouldn’t cry in front of any of the witnesses, but when I would get in my car, I was like, I just left that and I have to just go do my job now?…. I just know things that are hard to know.”

[...]

One grand juror recalled U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s testimony about Trump’s state of mind in the months after the 2020 election.

“He said that during that time, if somebody had told Trump that aliens came down and stole Trump ballots, that Trump would’ve believed it,” the juror said.

Cue Trump "Truth" rant about Lindsey Graham.

On some occasions, when a witness invoked the Fifth, a prosecutor would play video of speeches, TV interviews or testimony the witness had given elsewhere.

“I don’t know if it was like cruelty, but they’re like, if you’re going to take the Fifth, we’re going to watch you,” one of the jurors said.

Another juror said the panel was told repeatedly by prosecutors that they should not perceive someone invoking his or her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination as an admission of guilt.

“They were very passionate about saying: ‘I need you to understand that,” she said.

Well, what they needed was to be on record telling them that.

“I think the president just was one where we chose to focus our energies elsewhere, because it would be more productive in the long run,” Kohrs previously told the AJC.

That statement raised questions among some critics about whether Kohrs had improperly disclosed jury deliberations. But the other jurors told the AJC that the group had never discussed summoning Trump during its deliberations, suggesting it was prosecutors’ decision. In response, Kohrs said in a text that she “trust(ed) their recollection. And honestly with so much we talked about, it’s definitely possible I got it mixed up a bit.”

Also, she was so excited about her role and talking about it that I'm guessing she identified herself with the prosecutors - or at least with the people making the decisions, and the "we" didn't mean the jury, but rather her and the prosecutors.

One juror expressed appreciation for the behind-the-scenes look the group received of Georgia politics and the ballot-counting process. Another indicated he had grown more jaded after it became clear that some witnesses were telling the grand jury one thing about the election under oath and then casting doubt on the system when they returned to the campaign trail, sometimes hours later.

The group said they had no idea what Willis planned to do in response to their recommendations. But many described an increased regard for the elections system and the people who run it.

[...]

The grand jurors said they understand why the public release of their full final report needs to wait until Willis makes indictment decisions.

“A lot’s gonna come out sooner or later,” one of the jurors said. “And it’s gonna be massive. It’s gonna be massive.”

[...]

Prosecutors told the jurors that their notes would be destroyed, an announcement that angered one of the jurors, who had been toying with writing something about his experience. And they promised to send jurors a pen and coffee mug as a mark of their appreciation. Jurors said they’ve received neither so far.

Ooops. Well, they will now.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 03/16/2023:

According to the Georgia Constitution, not only can the governor convene a special session, the General Assembly can call itself into a special session, though that requires the signatures of 3/5 of the Georgia House.

[...]

Ralston, who died last year, described his December 2020 call with Trump during an interview the following day.

Trump “would like a special session of the Georgia General Assembly,” Ralston said. “He’s been clear on that before, and he was clear on that in the phone conversation yesterday. You know I shared with him my belief that based on the understanding I have of Georgia law that it was going to be very much an uphill battle.”

[...]

Former US Sen. David Perdue, a staunch Trump ally from Georgia, also requested a special session be convened during a meeting in December 2020 at Truist Park, where the Atlanta Braves play. Gov. Brian Kemp, Perdue and former Sen. Kelly Loeffler, the state’s other US senator at the time, and their aides attended.

  CNN

So maybe they ought to see some consequences?

UPDATE 03/16/2023 06:58 pm:

Grand juror spilling the beans

Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court, who is handling the case, has not barred the jurors from talking to reporters, but has sought to limit what they discuss — in particular when it comes to describing their deliberations. Ms. Kohrs is the first of the 23 jurors, and an additional three alternates, to speak out.

[...]

A focal point of the Atlanta inquiry is a call that Mr. Trump made on Jan. 2, 2021, to Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, in which he pressed Mr. Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, to recalculate the results and “find” 11,780 votes, or enough to overturn his loss in the state.

[...]

“We definitely talked about the alternate electors a fair amount, they were absolutely part of the discussion,” Ms. Kohrs said. “How could they not be?”

[...]

The jury also looked into hearings before state lawmakers in December 2020, orchestrated by Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, at which Mr. Giuliani and others advanced a number of falsehoods about the election.

[...]

“We found unanimously that there was no evidence of vote fraud in Fulton County in the 2020 election,” Ms. Kohrs said. “We wanted to make sure we put that in, because somehow that’s still a question.”

[...]

Ms. Kohrs, 30, declined to name the people recommended for indictment, since the judge handling the case decided to keep those details secret when he made public a few sections of the report last week. But seven sections that are still under wraps deal with indictment recommendations, Ms. Kohrs said.

Special grand juries in Georgia do not have indictment powers. Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., has led the investigation and will decide what charges to bring before a regular grand jury.

  NYT

An extra step. An extra delay of justice.

“It is not going to be some giant plot twist,” [Kohrs] added. “You probably have a fair idea of what may be in there. I’m trying very hard to say that delicately.”

On the other hand, she was terribly excited about her situation.

Ms. Kohrs said she was between jobs, after helping make masks during the pandemic, when she received a grand jury summons last year. Even though she didn’t vote in 2020, she said she was “insanely excited” about serving on the jury, adding, “This is one of the coolest things that’s ever happened to me.”

She could tell that not everyone on the jury felt the same way. “It seemed like everybody else was not initially happy about eight months of jury duty,” she said, and so she volunteered to be the forewoman.

[...]

As forewoman, she got to swear in each of the witnesses who came through, including her state’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp.

“It was really cool,” she said. “I got 60 seconds of eye contact with everyone who came in the room. You can tell a lot about people in that 60 seconds.”

Oh Jesus.

Noting that she was 11 when the Sept. 11 attacks happened, Ms. Kohrs said that “Rudy Giuliani is almost like a myth figure in my head, so I’m already intimidated.” She said she made a point of shaking his hand when his testimony was finished.

Oh JESUS.

When Senator Graham testified during the week of Thanksgiving, Ms. Kohrs asked him whether it was too early in the year for her to wear a Santa hat.

His response, she said: “Absolutely not.”

Face palm. 

I'm glad they made the findings they did, but I'm also glad my fate is not in the hands of a Georgia Grand Jury.

Among the things that surprised her in listening to the testimony, including from a number of officials from the Trump administration, was “how much people curse in the White House.”

In Trump's White House anyway.

UPDATE 07:38 am:

Yeah, well, that woman should not have been the foreman, either.  Scary.

I hesitated to read another article on her interview after that NYT one, but I soldiered on with this one.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who was on the receiving end of Trump’s pressure campaign, was “a really geeky kind of funny,” she said. State House Speaker David Ralston, who died in November, was hilarious and had the room in stitches. And Gov. Brian Kemp, who succeeded in delaying his appearance until after his reelection in November, seemed unhappy to be there.

[...]

At least one person who resisted answering questions became much more cooperative when prosecutors offered him immunity in front of the jurors, Kohrs said. Other witnesses came in with immunity deals already in place.

[...]

Kohrs said the grand jury wanted to hear from the former president but didn’t have any real expectation that he would offer meaningful testimony.

“Trump was not a battle we picked to fight,” she said.

Maybe I'm judging her too harshly, but "we" probably didn't include her. She would have been giddy to be entertained by Trump.

Though Kohrs said she tends to agree more with Democrats, Kohrs said she doesn’t identify with any political party and prefers to listen to all opinions.

“If I chose a political party, it would be the not-crazy party,” she said.

Kohrs called herself a “geek about the justice system” [...]

And yet...

Kohrs didn’t vote in 2020 and was only vaguely aware of controversy swirling in the wake of the election. She didn’t know the specifics of Trump’s allegations of widespread election fraud or his efforts to reverse his loss.

Could both of those things be true at the same time?

Kohrs sketched witnesses in her notebook as they spoke and was tickled when Bobby Christine, the former U.S. attorney for Georgia’s Southern District, complimented her “remarkable talent.” When the jurors’ notes were taken for shredding after their work was done, she managed to salvage two sketches — U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence — because there were no notes on those pages.

  AP

I'm surprised we haven't been shown those.

But, apparently, she DID pay attention and learn some things.

Kohrs was fascinated by an explainer on Georgia’s voting machines offered by a former Dominion Voting Systems executive. She also enjoyed learning about the inner workings of the White House from Cassidy Hutchinson, who Kohrs said was much more forthcoming than her old boss, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Something tells me Meadows is on their list of suggested indictments.

I'm guessing the orange one claimed exoneration by the Grand Jury because he'd already heard they were indicting him.

I did not read that one.  Help yourself.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE :

UPDATE 02/23/2023:

UPDATE 02/24/2023: