The special grand jury that will help investigate former President Donald Trump for possibly criminal meddling in Georgia's 2020 presidential election was seated Monday after a short selection process.
The biggest threat of criminal prosecution that Trump currently faces is the grand jury probe.
While still president, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to encourage him to vote for him.
The call made to the state's attorney general and the top federal prosecutor in Georgia are being eyed in the criminal investigation. The investigation is being overseen by the Fulton County District Attorney.
The Fulton County Courthouse is in downtown Atlanta.
200 potential grand jurors were summoned. A panel of 23 jurors and three alternates were quickly picked out of that group.
The grand jury, which will have the power to subpoena testimony from witnesses and to obtain evidence, will not start taking testimony until next month. The lag will give jurors time to arrange their schedules and to wait until the May 24 primary in the state, where Raffensperger and other potential witnesses are on the ballot.
The panel will not have the power to issue indictments, but can make recommendations to the prosecutor.
The grand jury that was investigating Trump for possible criminal conduct in his business expired last Friday without issuing any charges. The grandy jury wrapped up despite a former prosecutor's claims that there was evidence that Trump was guilty of many felonies.
The Manhattan District Attorney's office suggested that other grand juries could be used to testify about Trump.
The resignations of two prosecutors from the probe, and a third prosecutor's reported decision to step back from active involvement in the case, have dramatically lowered expectations of criminal charges against Trump there.
In Georgia, a judge in January granted a request to impanel a grand jury to investigate Trump.
There were reports that people associated with these disruptions had contacted the state's secretary of state, its attorney general, and the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.
The contacts were part of a pattern by Trump and his allies to try to reverse Biden's popular vote wins in several swing states. The president's margin of victory in the Electoral College was given to him by those states.
In the January 2021 call, Trump told Raffensperger that he wanted to find 11,780 votes. It came four days before a riot of Trump supporters disrupted a joint session of Congress that was meeting to certify Biden's Electoral College win.
In January, the district attorney wrote a judge that he had told the office that he would not participate in an interview with criminal investigators unless he was subpoenaed.
If that's possible, Trump has said his call with Raffensperger was perfect, perhaps even more so than his call with the Ukrainian President.
Trump was urged by Zelenskyy to announce an investigation into Biden and Hunter. Biden was the favorite to win the Democratic Party's presidential nomination in 2020.
At the time of the phone call, Trump was withholding congressionally approved military aid from Ukraine. He was acquitted at trial in the Senate after being impeached by the House of Representatives.
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