Georgia grand jury

Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis might reflect on the proverb, “Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.” She will have ample time to reflect as she watches her career decompose in a Georgia courtroom and state Senate hearing. The old saying is directly on point. The spotlight searches out prominent people and their entourage. If they are caught cheating, they will shrivel under the glare. If they are caught lying under oath, their troubles will be far worse. That is exactly what is happening in an Atlanta courtroom to Willis, as well as her paramour, Nathan Wade, and Wade’s former law partner, Terrence Bradley, who was also briefly his divorce attorney. The spotlight is on Willis because she is prosecuting Donald Trump and a busload of co-defendants.

Attorney Jenna Ellis, a former legal advisor to Donald Trump’s 2020 election campaign, pled guilty to one count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings on Tuesday morning.    Ellis, who was charged alongside Trump and seventeen others with violating Georgia's anti-racketeering laws, has become the latest co-defendant to enter a plea deal in the case to overturn Georgia’s election results from the 2020 presidential election. Ellis’s guilty plea also implicates claims of voter fraud made by former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and other Trump lawyers during a December 2020 Georgia Senate committee hearing.   Ellis distanced herself from the former president in a tearful statement before the court.

A Georgia district attorney operating in Fulton County unveiled a sprawling state indictment Monday charging former president Donald J. Trump and his allies with violating a mafia-era state law — modeled after a federal law known as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”) — for their alleged attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Weighing in at ninety-eight pages, the forty-one-count indictment charges nineteen defendants with more than 161 overt acts in furtherance of a conspiracy “to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.” The indictment is stunning on its face for several reasons.