and then so, what will we hear from this room? we will hear from the judge himself? yeah. it s sort of up to every presiding judge of how they want to handle these things. you know, some judges, when they re in this position just get a stack of papers. they sign it. they hand it back to an official from the clerk s office and they don t say anything about it. we re waiting to see if judge robert mcbernie is actually going to say anything, presumably when he gets handed whatever is provided to him from the grand jury today. again, the presiding judge has a lot of leeway to sort of decide what he wants to say in this situation. and we re waiting to see if judge robert mcbernie it looks like the clerk is receiving paperwork now, sara. elie hoenig yes, i m seeing our legal analyst is also joining us. what are we watching? the stage is set here. this appears to be the final stages.
david reference. i apologize for the younger viewers. the idea the work day is done at 5:00 and you go home. today they did not do that and that is unusual, right? oh. that was absolutely unusual. we ve been at the courthouse, i can t tell you how many times, and it s in a month no man s land when you get past 5:00. not only the judge has left for the day, but the clerk and the clerk staff has left for the day. this is a clearly concerted effort to keep staff around in order to be able to do this this evening. judge robert mcbernie, who s the presiding judge this week, gave reporters who spent all day in his courtroom a number of updates saying, i m still sticking around. the courthouse closes at 5:00. i m still going to be here. it was clear while a number of people were leaving today that there was some staff staying behind in anticipation of the grand jury handing up these indictments. so, this is a very different feel and certainly a different time line from what we re used to se
geoff duncan, testified for over an hour today. thanks for joining us tonight. anderson, back to you. cnn s sara murray is outside the courthouse in atlanta with more on what the rest of the night might look like. sara, what are you hearing? look, we obviously want to know when we re going to know what is in these indictments and if we could hear from the fulton county district attorney. we are learning she s expected to make public statements this evening. that is not going to happen until these indictments are processed. we re told that that could take one to three hours. so, we re still in this waiting game to see how long it s actually going to take the clerk s office to process these indictments, to make them available public. and then after that happens, again, one to three hours from now, we are expecting the fulton county district attorney to make public statements. we should note the one two three hour clock, we re told, did start when the clerk left judge mcbernie s cou
overturn biden s 2020 win. this involves potential violations of state law. let s break it down. charges that could include election fraud, making false statements to state and local officials and even racketeering which willis previously used to prosecute gangs and even public school officials who oversaw a cheating scheme. here are some of the key players in all of this. of course, d.a. fani willis, the judge overseeing the grand jury, robert mcbernie. he s defended willis, but then blocked her from pursuing meantime you have secretary of state fred raffensperger who is on that call.
this just in from fulton county georgia. the judge presiding over court today says he s prepared to keep court open past 5:00 p.m. tonight as the grand jury there hears evidence about trump s efforts to overturn the election results in that state, perhaps illegally. i want to bring in cnn s sara murray who is outside the courthouse and former federal prosecutor elie honig. walk us through what s happening inside that building. how big a deal is it that the judge might keep the courtroom open past 5:00 p.m.? reporter: we don t know exactly what this means. our colleagues are inside the courtroom where judge robert mcbernie, the presiding judge, told reporters he s prepared to keep the courtroom open past 5:00 p.m.