If I was Fulton County DA Fani Willis, I would send a subpoena today dated for Wednesday, November 9 at 8:00 a.m. “Your ass had better be sitting in that witness chair at 8:00 a.m. before the special grand jury.” If Stacey Abrams defeats this cracker Jim Crow 2.0 voter suppressor on Election Day, it will be all the sweeter.
The Associated Press reports, Judge delays Gov. Kemp’s testimony in Georgia election probe:
A judge ruled Monday that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp must testify before a special grand jury that’s investigating possible illegal attempts by then-President Donald Trump and others to influence the 2020 election in the state — but not until after the November midterm election.
Lawyers for Kemp had argued that immunities related to his position as governor protect him from having to testify. But Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who’s overseeing the special grand jury, disagreed and said the governor must appear before the panel. But he did agree to a request from Kemp’s lawyers to delay that testimony until after the Nov. 8 election, in which the Republican governor faces a rematch with Democrat Stacey Abrams.
“The Governor is in the midst of a re-election campaign and this criminal grand jury investigation should not be used by the District Attorney, the Governor’s opponent, or the Governor himself to influence the outcome of that election,” McBurney wrote. “The sound and prudent course is to let the election proceed without further litigation or other activity concerning the Governor’s involvement in the special grand jury’s work.”
But once the election is over, McBurney wrote that he expects Kemp’s lawyers to “promptly make arrangements for his appearance.”
A delay could increase the likelihood that Trump will be a declared presidential candidate by the time the investigation moves toward its conclusion, further raising the political stakes. [One does not get a pass simply because they are a candidate. Just ask Hillary Clinton.] The investigation is one of several that could have serious legal consequences for the former president.
A statement from the governor’s office says McBurney “acknowledged the potential political impact of the timing of these proceedings and correctly paused” Kemp’s involvement until after the election. The governor plans to work with Willis’ team and the judge “to ensure a full accounting of the Governor’s limited role in the issues being investigated is available to the special grand jury.”
A spokesperson for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Also Monday, McBurney declined to quash a subpoena for lawyer Kenneth Chesebro [the “fake electors” Coup Plot Memo], who represented the Trump campaign. He’s scheduled to appear before the special grand jury on Tuesday, according to a court filing.
Willis opened the investigation early last year, prompted by a January 2021 phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger during which the then-president suggested the state’s top election official could “find” the votes needed to overturn his loss. But the investigation’s scope has widened considerably since then.
Raffensperger and some other state officials have already appeared before the special grand jury, which McBurney noted in his ruling.
Willis has also been pursuing testimony from close Trump allies and advisers. Former New York mayor and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, who’s been told he faces possible criminal charges in the investigation, testified earlier this month. U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, is currently fighting a subpoena in federal court. And Willis last week filed paperwork seeking to compel testimony from former 
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Trump-allied attorney Sidney Powell, among others.
Sidney Powell’s Kraken lawyer sidekick “L. Lin Wood said he has been subpoenaed to appear before a special grand jury in Georgia investigating former U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Pro-Trump lawyer says subpoenaed by Georgia grand jury investigating 2020 election.
Prosecutors have said they want to ask Kemp about Raffensperger’s call with the then-president, as well as his own contacts with Trump and others in the wake of the 2020 general election.
Kemp’s lawyers had argued he was protected by the principle of “sovereign immunity,” which says the state can’t be sued without its consent. But McBurney agreed with Willis’ team that the protection isn’t applicable because Kemp isn’t being sued and is instead being called as a witness to provide facts for a criminal investigation. Duh!
Kemp’s lawyers had also raised concerns about attorney-client privilege, and McBurney wrote that neither prosecutors nor grand jurors will be able to ask the governor about the contents of communications covered by that privilege. He said he’s aware of several conversations of interest to the investigation to which that privilege applies.
If there are disputes over what questions can be asked that cannot be resolved by the lawyers involved, they can be brought to McBurney “for resolution (or at least helpful direction),” the judge wrote.
McBurney’s ruling Monday came after communications between Kemp’s attorneys and Willis’ team over when and how the governor would provide information for the investigation broke down. In a footnote of his ruling, the judge noted that correspondence between the two sides that was attached to court filings showed a “lack of civility among the attorneys involved.”
Chesebro had argued that any testimony about his representation of the Trump campaign would be protected by attorney-client privilege. McBurney found that while much of what Chesebro did for the campaign is protected by privilege, there are topics of interest to the investigation that aren’t off limits.
In a court filing seeking to compel his testimony, Willis wrote that Chesebro was “an attorney working with the Trump Campaign’s legal efforts seeking to influence the results of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere.”
As part of those efforts, he worked with Republicans in Georgia in the weeks following the election at the direction of the Trump campaign, Willis wrote. That included working on the coordination and execution of a plan to have 16 Georgia Republicans sign a certificate declaring falsely that Trump had won the 2020 presidential election and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors even though Joe Biden had won the state and a slate of Democratic electors was certified.
This is where the crime-fraud exception eviscerates the attorney-client privilege. He has no privilege to commit a crime in coordination with or on behalf of his client.
Chesebro is probalby a target of the special grand jury investigation as a Coup Plotter co-conspirator for his fake electors Coup Plot Memo.
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UPDATE: Coup Memos lawyer John Eastman, who is a target of the special grand jury in Georgia, invoked his fifth amendment privilege against self-incrimination today, just as he did before the January 6 Committee, “Trump lawyer John Eastman takes Fifth before Georgia grand jury in election-interference probe”, https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/31/trump-lawyer-john-eastman-takes-fifth-at-georgia-grand-jury.html
A lawyer who had pushed to overturn the 2020 election loss of then-President Donald Trump invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in refusing to answer questions during an appearance Wednesday before a grand jury in Georgia, his attorneys said.
John Eastman also invoked protections under attorney-client privilege in refusing to answer at least some questions he was asked before the grand jury, which was convened as part of a criminal probe into the possibility of illegal interference in Georgia’s presidential election contest, his attorneys said.
Jennifer Rubin writes, “Georgia judge to Republicans: You’re not getting out of testifying”, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/30/georgia-judge-testimony-graham-trump/
In Georgia, a state judge on Monday decided to end this pattern of legal recalcitrance for two witnesses in a grand jury investigation of election fraud.
And in federal court, where [Trump Fluffer] Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) is trying to quash a subpoena that seeks his testimony, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis filed a withering reply brief that speaks directly to Graham’s alleged role in the White House effort to find thousands of imaginary votes in Georgia after the 2020 election.
On Monday, state court judge Robert McBurney rejected Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s attempt to avoid testifying before the special grand jury investigating defeated former president Donald Trump’s crusade to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. Dismissing any claim of immunity, McBurney wrote: “The Governor must honor the subpoena — as have the Secretary of State and the Attorney General and many other agents of the State in these criminal proceedings. Sovereign immunity wards off civil actions, not criminal ones.” Acknowledging that attorney-client privilege might bar some testimony, the judge nevertheless cut Kemp a break in allowing him to testify after the election.
“It is a Solomonic resolution,” Brookings fellow Norm Eisen tells me. “Willis gets her evidence and the governor sidesteps the political season. Willis was not going to charge this case before the end of the year anyhow.” Eisen, a former co-counsel for House impeachment managers, adds, “This is about locking in firsthand evidence of what happened in Trump-Kemp contacts before she charges so there are no surprises at trial. That can be done equally well in November.”
In another order, McBurney denied former Trump campaign lawyer Kenneth Chesebro’s motion to avoid testimony on the grounds that it violated the attorney-client privilege. While some areas would be shielded by that privilege, McBurney again found that other areas of inquiry, including formation of an alternate (i.e., phony) slate of electors and Chesebro’s communication with Republican officials in Georgia, are not protected. Whether the claim is attorney-client or executive privilege, McBurney has decided not to allow these witnesses to avoid testifying altogether.
Meanwhile, Willis filed a blistering response to Graham’s suit in federal court in Georgia’s Northern District. Willis wants to know more about the calls Graham made to Georgia officials after Biden won the state in 2020. Graham has argued that because the constitutional “Speech or Debate” clause protects Graham from testifying about speech made in the normal course of legislating, he should not have to testify in Willis’ grand jury probe. Willis dismissed this idea: “The Senator has no response … except to insist once again that actually, the calls are manifestly legislative in their entirety because he later performed his duties under the Electoral Count Act, and that any disagreement about their nature devolves to questions of implications and motivations.”
In an unsubtle reminder that the district attorney has already heard about the conversation from the Georgia officials, Willis writes: “Sen. Graham brought up the signature verification process to explore the viability of a ‘potential court challenge,’ not possible or proposed legislation.” Helping Trump to dream up state causes of action or floating the idea of “invalidating absentee ballots from counties with higher rates of signature errors,” are certainly not legislative functions. They appear, instead, to be Graham’s effort to advance Trump’s scheme to overturn the election. (Indeed, Graham already let the cat out the bag by telling, as the district attorney put it, “reporters that he had tried to persuade [Secretary of State Brad] Raffensperger to adopt a different method of signature verification, one which the Senator preferred to the method being used at the time in Georgia.”)
Graham’s own conduct here is so problematic that it raises the strong possibility he might invoke the Fifth Amendment if forced to testify. Graham’s argument is certainly unnerving (namely, as the district attorney described it, “cajoling state-level executive branch officials to implement their laws in accordance with the Senator’s preferences is actually protected legislative activity, and that if it is not, it should be”). But all that proves is that Graham, like Trump, apparently considers himself entitled to lobby state officials to overthrow the will of the voters. In Graham’s case, that’s not grounds for exemption from testifying; it’s reason for voters to kick him out of the Senate when he’s next on the ballot.
Republicans’ arrogant refusal to abide by legally-obtained, appropriate and necessary subpoenas might finally come to an end in Georgia. It’s a long overdue corrective and reaffirmation that the law applies to everyone.
Earlier: “Mark Meadows ordered to testify in Fulton County probe of Trump election overturn efforts”, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/25/mark-meadows-ordered-to-testify-in-fulton-county-probe-of-trump-election-overturn-efforts-00053817
The Atlanta-area grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election is demanding testimony from Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, about his involvement in the effort.
Filings in the case show Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney overseeing the investigation, ordered Meadows to appear for a Sept. 27 interview. She’s also seeking Sept. 22 appearances from two other figures associated with Trump: attorney Sidney Powell and cyber researcher James Waldron.
[T]he DA’s decision to seek Meadows’ testimony shows the investigation has reached Trump’s door. Already the grand jury has sought testimony from the attorneys and congressional allies who supported and helped devise Trump’s strategy to subvert the election. It’s one of several expansive criminal probes that have become an acute threat to Trump, including the unfolding investigation of highly classified information housed at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and the federal grand jury probe of Trump allies’ efforts to disrupt the transfer of power.
Several of those allies, including attorney Kenneth Chesebro and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), are fighting subpoenas to testify to the grand jury. An attorney for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp argued Thursday in Fulton County Superior Court to quash a subpoena for his testimony.
Trump ally Rudy Giuliani appeared last week for a closed-door interview. It’s unclear whether he asserted any privileges. He was recently informed that he has become a target of Willis’ investigation. Sixteen Republican Party leaders and activists who signed certificates falsely claiming to be presidential electors from Georgia are also targets of the probe.
Others who have been subpoenaed to appear include Trump attorneys John Eastman and Cleta Mitchell, as well as Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.).