A Georgia prosecutor probing whether Donald Trump and his allies illegally sought to overturn the state’s 2020 election results is expected to seek an indictment from a grand jury next week.
Two witnesses who previously received subpoenas confirmed on Saturday that they have been told to appear before a grand jury in Atlanta on Tuesday, the clearest indication yet that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis will lay out her case to the jury after more than two years of investigating.
Geoff Duncan, the state’s former lieutenant governor, told CNN that he had been asked to testify on Tuesday.
“I’ll certainly answer whatever questions are put in front of me,” said Duncan, a Republican who has criticized Trump’s false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
An independent journalist, George Chidi, said in a post on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, that he had also been instructed to appear on Tuesday.
A spokesperson for Willis’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. She has already indicated she would seek charges by the end of next week, and security measures have visibly increased around the county courthouse in recent weeks.
If Trump is charged in Georgia, it would mark his fourth indictment in less than five months, and the second to arise from his efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. He was charged earlier this month in Washington federal court with orchestrating a multistate conspiracy to reverse the election results.
Special Counsel Jack Smith, who brought the Washington case, has also charged Trump separately in Florida with illegally retaining classified documents after leaving office and with obstruction of justice.
Manhattan prosecutors, meanwhile, indicted Trump this spring for falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to a porn star who says she had a sexual encounter with Trump years ago.
Trump remains the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, despite his legal woes. He has portrayed all the investigations as part of a coordinated effort by Democrats to undermine his candidacy.
In a post on his Truth Social site on Saturday, Trump again called the Georgia investigation a “witch hunt.”
Willis is expected to charge multiple people, possibly by using the state’s broad racketeering statute. Her investigation began soon after Trump made a phone call to the state’s top election official, Republican Brad Raffensperger, and urged him to “find” enough votes to alter the outcome.
In addition to efforts to pressure Georgia officials, Willis has examined a breach of election machines in a rural county and a plot to use fake electors in a bid to capture the state’s electoral votes for Trump rather than Biden.
Chidi, the journalist, has written about happening upon a secret meeting of those electors at the state capitol in December 2020.
Duncan, the former head of the state Senate, publicly criticized Republican lawmakers and Trump associates who pushed the false narrative that the election was tainted by fraud.
Trump election investigation in Georgia headed to grand jury next week
https://arab.news/npn5x
Trump election investigation in Georgia headed to grand jury next week
- If Trump is charged in Georgia, it would mark his fourth indictment in less than five months
Venezuela’s acting president calls for oil industry reforms to attract more foreign investment
- In her speech, Rodríguez said money earned from foreign oil sales would go into two funds: one dedicated to social services for workers and the public health care system, and another to economic development and infrastructure projects
CARACAS, Venezuela: Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodriguez used her first state of the union address on Thursday to promote oil industry reforms that would attract foreign investment, an objective aggressively pushed by the Trump administration since it toppled the country’s longtime leader less than two weeks ago.
Rodríguez, who has been under pressure from the US to fall in line with its vision for the oil-rich nation, said sales of Venezuelan oil would go to bolster crisis-stricken health services, economic development and other infrastructure projects.
While she sharply criticized the Trump administration and said there was a “stain on our relations,” the former vice president also outlined a distinct vision for the future between the two historic adversaries, straying from her predecessors, who have long railed against American intervention in Venezuela.
“Let us not be afraid of diplomacy” with the US, said Rodriguez, who must now navigate competing pressures from the Trump administration and a government loyal to former President Nicolás Maduro.
The speech, which was broadcast on a delay in Venezuela, came one day after Rodríguez said her government would continue releasing prisoners detained under Maduro in what she described as “a new political moment” since his ouster.
Trump on Thursday met at the White House with Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, whose political party is widely considered to have won 2024 elections rejected by Maduro. But in endorsing Rodríguez, who served as Maduro’s vice president since 2018, Trump has sidelined Machado.
In her speech, Rodríguez said money earned from foreign oil sales would go into two funds: one dedicated to social services for workers and the public health care system, and another to economic development and infrastructure projects.
Hospitals and other health care facilities across the country have long suffered. Patients are asked to provide practically all supplies needed for their care, from syringes to surgical screws. Economic turmoil, among other factors, has pushed millions of Venezuelans to migrate from the South American nation in recent years.
In moving forward, the acting president must walk a tightrope, balancing pressures from both Washington and top Venezuelan officials who hold sway over Venezuela’s security forces and strongly oppose the US Her recent public speeches reflect those tensions — vacillating from conciliatory calls for cooperation with the US, to defiant rants echoing the anti-imperialist rhetoric of her toppled predecessor.
American authorities have long railed against a government they describe as a “dictatorship,” while Venezuela’s government has built a powerful populist ethos sharply opposed to US meddling in its affairs.
For the foreseeable future, Rodríguez’s government has been effectively relieved of having to hold elections. That’s because when Venezuela’s high court granted Rodríguez presidential powers on an acting basis, it cited a provision of the constitution that allows the vice president to take over for a renewable period of 90 days.
Trump enlisted Rodríguez to help secure US control over Venezuela’s oil sales despite sanctioning her for human rights violations during his first term. To ensure she does his bidding, Trump threatened Rodríguez earlier this month with a “situation probably worse than Maduro.”
Maduro, who is being held in a Brooklyn jail, has pleaded not guilty to drug-trafficking charges.
Before Rodríguez’s speech on Thursday, a group of government supporters was allowed into the presidential palace, where they chanted for Maduro, who the government insists remains the country’s president. “Maduro, resist, the people are rising,” they shouted.
