5 takeaways from Georgia grand jury forewoman’s comments on Trump probe

The Georgia special grand jury that investigated potential interference in the 2020 election by Donald Trump and his allies recommended multiple indictments for a range of potential crimes in its final report to Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis, the grand jurors’ forewoman said in several interviews on Tuesday.

“How often does something actually happen? I would love to see something actually happen. Don’t make me take back my faith in the system,” the forewoman, Emily Kohrs, told CNN of her experience on the grand jury now that its months of work are finished. “The only thing I would be disappointed in, at this point, is if this whole thing just disappears. That’s the only thing that would make me sad.”

Ultimately, the decision to bring indictments rests with Willis, who can use the report and any information the special grand jury discovered as part of her reasoning. But she isn’t under any legal obligation to follow grand jurors’ recommendations.

Under Georgia law, Kohrs cannot legally disclose the report’s findings, which were sealed by the judge presiding over the case. But in contrast to federal special grand jurors, she is able to discuss her experience on the panel, as long as it doesn’t involve its deliberations. Other grand jurors can also speak to their experience, though the list of members is not made public and none of the other 22 grand jurors have spoken out widely so far.

“Can you imagine doing this for eight months and not coming out with a whole list” of recommendations, Kohrs told CNN. “It’s not a short list. It’s not.”

“There may be some names on that list that you wouldn’t expect. But the big name that everyone keeps asking me about — I don’t think you will be shocked,” she added.

Here are the biggest takeaways from the forewoman’s round of interviews, which she began after the Associated Press obtained a subpoena that disclosed her name:

Across multiple interviews, Kohrs said that the grand jury’s conclusions would not come as a “plot twist” to the public and said an extensive list of people were recommended for what she implied were multiple different criminal charges.

When asked by NBC News whether Trump was among those recommended for charges, she replied, “potentially, it might.”

“It is not going to be some giant plot twist,” she told the New York Times. “You probably have a fair idea of what may be in there. I’m trying very hard to say that delicately.”

Though Trump was not deposed by the grand jury, the committee can still recommend charges be brought for any actions they believe he took.

“Trump was not a battle we picked to fight,” Kohrs told the Associated Press, regarding the decision not to subpoena him.

In an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, she added: “We kind of knew what to expect, and so especially with our time being limited and with our resources being limited, when it came to that it was like ‘eh, we’d rather get this person, which is a battle that we can win, than this other one.’”

On Jan. 3, 2021, The Washington Post published audio of a phone call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), in which the president told the state’s top election official that he wanted to “find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”

Since that phone call, Willis, through the special grand jury, has sought testimony from dozens of witnesses, and at least 18 people have been identified as potential targets of the investigation. There are several Georgia laws under which Willis could bring charges, including the state’s anti-racketeering laws, which are intended to curb organized crime.

“I don’t think that there are any giant plot twists coming. I don’t think there’s any giant ‘that’s not the way I expected this to go at all’ moments,” Kohrs told NBC News. “I would not expect you to be shocked.”

While Willis previously told The Post that the call between Trump and Raffensperger was the catalyst for her launching an investigation into potential election interference, investigators discovered more Trump phone calls in the course of their work, Kohrs revealed.

“We heard a lot of recordings of President Trump on the phone,” Kohrs told the Journal-Constitution. She didn’t describe the calls in any detail but said that it was “amazing how many hours of footage you can find of that man on the phone.” She added that the new calls “were privately recorded by people or recorded by a staffer.”

Kohrs did not say whether the calls contained any comments grand jurors suspected constituted a crime, though she did note that she thought it was “fantastic” and “phenomenal” that Trump had incorrectly posted on social media that the special grand jury’s report — which has not yet been released in full — provided him with “total exoneration.”

“Did he really say that?” Kohrs asked in the interview with the paper. “Oh, that’s fantastic. That’s phenomenal. I love it.”

The part of the final report released last week recommended that “one or more” witnesses who testified face perjury charges “where the evidence is compelling.” In her interviews, Kohrs shed further light on grand jurors’ reasoning, stating that the panel had heard contradictory testimony that prompted further inquiry.

“I remember at least one and probably more than one moment where an answer made me pause, because it did not match something that either I had heard previously or something that I had seen,” she told NBC News.

Kohrs noted in her interviews that many figures who had resisted testifying before the grand jury appeared forthcoming with their comments once they were speaking to the committee under oath. She found Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) to be “honest” in his testimony and said that former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was open. “He may have fought it tooth and nail, but when he got to the door, it was like he respected the fact that the battle had been decided,” Kohrs told NBC News.

She told the Associated Press that Raffensperger was “a really geeky kind of funny” and said Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) did not seem like he wanted to be there.

Kohrs also drew sketches of some of those who testified. While many of her drawings were confiscated because they included notes from the inquiry, she shared her drawings of Marc Short and Graham with the Journal-Constitution.

Legal sources were of two minds about the potential for damage to Willis’s case from Kohrs’s talkativeness.

“I don’t think it is going to have a legally detrimental impact on the looming very likely case because she’s not really disclosing anything that is new,” said Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has co-written several studies on the legal implications of the case for Trump and his allies. Eisen noted that Kohrs stayed within the parameters of what she is allowed as a former special grand juror, given that she will have no role in any prosecution going forward. She is enough removed that what she said amounted to “colorful comments” that “don’t have a legal impact on questions of bias or undue publicity,” Eisen said.

But Kohrs discussed several events in her interviews that may prove legally problematic for any future investigation, said Barbara McQuade, a former federal prosecutor and now law professor at the University of Michigan. Those include her discussion of swearing in witnesses with a “teenage mutant ninja turtle popsicle in one hand” from an event hosted by the district attorney’s office. She also spoke somewhat negatively about witnesses, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, for exercising his Fifth Amendment right.

“If what (Kohrs) says is true, then if I were Fani Willis I would be dressing down my prosecutors and saying ‘You may not socialize with members of grand jury because it creates all kinds of potential problems,’ including the appearance of compromise of their independence,” McQuade said.

Reached by The Washington Post for comment, Kohrs said she was not at liberty to discuss the findings or recommendations of the report.