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ATLANTA (AP) — The Georgia prosecutor investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and others illegally tried to interfere in the 2020 election filed paperwork Friday seeking to compel testimony from a new batch of Trump allies, including former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Fulton
County District Attorney Fani Willis filed petitions in court seeking to have
Gingrich and Flynn, as well as former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann and
others, testify next month before a special grand jury that’s been seated to
aid her investigation.
They join a
string of other high-profile Trump allies and advisers who have been called to
testify in the probe. Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and Trump
attorney who’s been told he could face criminal charges in the probe, testified
in August. Attorneys John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro have also appeared
before the panel. U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s attempt to fight his subpoena is
pending in a federal appeals court. And paperwork has been filed seeking
testimony from others, including former White House chief of staff Mark
Meadows.
Flynn didn’t
immediately respond to email and phone messages seeking comment, and his lawyer
also didn’t immediately return an email seeking comment. Gingrich referred
questions to his attorney, who declined to comment. Herschmann could not
immediately be reached.
Willis has
said she plans to take a monthlong break from public activity in the case
leading up to the November midterm election, which is one month from Saturday.
Each of the
petitions filed Friday seeks to have the potential witnesses appear in November
after the election. But the process for securing testimony from out-of-state
witnesses sometimes takes a while, so it appears Willis is putting the wheels
in motion for activity to resume after her self-imposed pause.
Compelling
testimony from witnesses who don’t live in Georgia requires Willis to use a
process that involves getting judges in the states where they live to order them
to appear. The petitions she filed Friday are essentially precursors to
subpoenas.
Fulton
County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who’s overseeing the special grand
jury, signed off on the petitions, certifying that each person whose testimony
is sought is a “necessary and material” witness for the investigation.
The petition
for Gingrich’s testimony relies on “information made publicly available” by the
U.S. House committee that’s investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S.
Capitol.
It says he
was involved along with others associated with the Trump campaign in a plan to
run television ads that “repeated and relied upon false claims about fraud in
the 2020 election” and encouraged members of the public to contact state
officials to push them to challenge and overturn the election results based on
those claims.
Gingrich was
also involved in a plan to have Republican fake electors sign certificates
falsely stating that Trump had won the state and that they were the state’s
official electors even though Democrat Joe Biden had won, the petition says.
The petition
seeking Flynn’s testimony says he appeared in an interview on conservative
cable news channel Newsmax and said Trump “could take military capabilities”
and place them in swing states and “basically re-run an election in each of
those states.”
He also met
with Trump, attorney Sidney Powell and others at the White House on Dec. 18,
2020, for a meeting that, according to news reports, “focused on topics
including invoking martial law, seizing voting machines, and appointing Powell
as special counsel to investigate the 2020 election,” Willis wrote.
Willis in
August filed a petition seeking testimony from Powell.
Herschmann,
who featured prominently in the House committee hearings on the Capitol attack,
was a senior adviser to Trump from August 2020 through the end of his term and
“was present for multiple meetings between former President Trump and others
related to the 2020 election,” Willis wrote in the petition seeking his
testimony.
She wrote
that the House committee also revealed that Herschmann had “multiple
conversations” with Eastman, Giuliani, Powell “and others known to be
associated with the Trump Campaign, related to their efforts to influence the
results of the November 2020 elections in Georgia and elsewhere.” Specifically,
he had a “heated conversation” with Eastman “concerning efforts in Georgia,”
she added.
Willis also
filed petitions Friday to compel testimony from Jim Penrose and Stephen
Cliffgard Lee.
She
identified Penrose as “a cyber investigations, operations and forensics
consultant” who worked with Powell and others known to be associated with the
Trump campaign in late 2020 and early 2021.
He also
communicated with Powell and others regarding an agreement to hire data
solutions firm SullivanStrickler to copy data and software from voting system
equipment in Coffee County, about 200 miles southeast of Atlanta, as well as in
Michigan and Nevada, Willis wrote. Penrose did not immediately respond to an
email and phone message seeking comment.
Willis wrote
in a petition seeking Lee’s testimony that he was part of an effort to pressure
elections worker Ruby Freeman, who was the subject of false claims about
election fraud in Fulton County. He could not immediately be reached for
comment.
Special
grand juries are impaneled in Georgia to investigate complex cases with large
numbers of witnesses and potential logistical concerns. They can compel
evidence and subpoena witnesses for questioning and, unlike regular grand
juries, can also subpoena the target of an investigation to appear before it.
When its
investigation is complete, the special grand jury issues a final report and can
recommend action. It’s then up to the district attorney to decide whether to
ask a regular grand jury for an indictment.