By Tom Baxter
On Jan. 24, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis told Judge Robert McBurney that decisions on possible charges related to the effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election were “imminent.” Since then, the clock has ticked, crickets have chirped, but there’s been only silence from the DA.
Last week, the sphinx cleared her throat.
In a motion, Willis asked McBurney to disqualify Kimberly Burroughs Debrow, attorney for 10 of the Georgia Donald Trump supporters and would-be electors investigated by a special Fulton County grand jury.
“The status quo that existed whereby Ms. Debrow represents 10 of the electors has changed, and problems have arisen whereby such representation is now untenable,” Willis wrote. Those sphinx-like words suggest that beneath the surface, a lot is beginning to move in a case that has seemed frozen since the special grand jury submitted its report.
When they re-interviewed Debrow’s clients recently, Willis wrote, investigators learned that some of them had not been told of an immunity offer Fulton prosecutors floated last year. Debrow says she has tapes that disprove that charge. Willis also said some of those interviewed had accused another elector of a crime.
Thinking back, when Willis said “decisions” last January, most of the country only heard her say “decision” because the question of whether she would indict the former president was foremost in mind. Since then the ice has been broken, so to speak, with Trump’s New York indictment, and we are beginning to get a better sense of the stakes not only for Trump and his associates but for the Georgia Republican Party.
We knew from what some of the grand jury members have said that multiple indictments could be expected. We know after the motion last week that cracks have emerged among the electors. They are still called that in news stories, even though they never really were electors because until another grand jury makes it official next month, none of them can be called defendants. But the realization seems to be setting in that indictments could finally be, in fact, imminent.
This wasn’t the first time lawyers have been an issue in this case. Last year McBurney ruled that state party chairman David Shafer had to be separated from the larger group. He’s now represented by Holly Pierson, who had been co-counsel with Debrow. The judge said he was doing this because of the central role Shafer played in trying to get the election overturned. That suggests that Shafer has particular cause to worry as the regular grand jury date approaches, but we don’t know that yet.
As that day draws nearer, the importance of McBurney’s ruling last year that Willis couldn’t bring a case against now Lt. Gov. Burt Jones because she hosted a fundraiser for Jones’ Democratic opponent becomes more evident. It would be a calamity for the state party if its chairman and several officers of the party were to be indicted next month. It would be much worse if a sitting lieutenant governor were still in jeopardy of being charged.
The special grand jury also investigated the data breach which occurred at the Coffee County elections office the day after the riot at the nation’s capitol in 2021.
Four days after Willis filed her motion last week, CNN reported that it has obtained a text message between two Trump operatives discussing the possibility of using the illegally obtained election data to decertify the U.S. Senate runoff election in Georgia as well as to challenge the results of the presidential election.
Since Coffee County voted more than 2-to-1 for both Republican Senate candidates in the runoff election, and overwhelmingly for Trump in the presidential election, it’s hard to see what value the purloined election data could have had in proving the election was rigged. For prosecutors, what matters is that the Coffee County breach was an inside job, carried out with a local election official in attendance. The CNN scoop could mean Willis will have a few more decisions to make.
Shafer has indicated he won’t run for state chairman again, but the results of district elections over the weekend indicate that the GOP’s grassroots activists are still locked in on the idea that the 2020 election was rigged, even as Gov. Brian Kemp and other elected Republicans sidestep away from the state party. If anything, the next chair of the party is likely to be even more committed to that perilous proposition than the last one.
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