Georgia judge orders prosecutor to respond to Trump’s challenge

A Georgia judge ordered Atlanta district attorney Fani Willis Monday to respond to former President Donald Trump’s bid to quash a special grand jury’s investigative report into the former president’s attempts to overturn the Peach State’s 2020 election results.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney informed the DA’s office that it had until May 1 to respond to the Trump team challenge and to let him know if an in-person hearing was needed to resolve any issues. 

Trump’s lawyers filed the motion last week seeking to toss the grand jury report and to bar Willis from continuing to investigate the 76-year-old Trump.

Willis convened the special grand jury shortly after Trump’s Jan. 2, 2021 phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was revealed. The panel first met in May 2022. 

“So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state,” Trump told Raffensperger on the call. “There’s no way I lost Georgia. There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of votes.”​

The Fulton County grand jury heard testimony from about 75 witnesses, including key Trump allies Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

McBurney released portions of the report last month, and Willis said in January that decisions on indictments were “imminent.”

Trump’s lawyers argued in their nearly 500-page motion that the investigation was tainted by a series of media appearances from grand jury forewoman Emily Kohrs as well as Willis’ conduct.

During interviews in February, Kohrs was asked whether Trump was recommended for indictment. 

“You’re not going to be shocked. It’s not rocket science. You won’t be too surprised,” she told the New York Times.

“The whole world has watched the process of the (special purpose grand jury) unfold,” the filing said, “and what they have witnessed was a process that was confusing, flawed and, at times, unconstitutional.”

With Post wires