of an election, pressuring election officials to change election results, that, of course, is a crime. this state prosecutor s office in fulton county, georgia, opened that investigation under georgia state law, pressuring or intimidating election officials is a georgia state crime. it s a crime in, everych state the tacountry, and, of course, it s also a federal crime. but while u.s. attorney general merrick garland has made sort of vague patriotic statements about no one being above the law and t federal prosecutors following the evidence wherever it leads, so far there is no evidence that federal prosecutors are investigating that call or any other reported instances of pressure that the president personally put on georgia election officials about the conduct of their official duties.re so far the only known criminal investigation into his efforts to falsify the election results anywhere in the country, the aty only known criminal investigation is that georgia e state inve
Fulton county district attorney s office in georgia. now, it was months ago that we first learned that the prosecutor who leads that office, a prosecutor named fani t. willis, had opened a criminal investigation into alleged violation of georgia state law. violation of georgia state law. pressured and intimidated after the last presidential election that they should effectively falsify the results of that state s election.si it was a year ago, january 3rd, last year, when the washington post published this shocking audio recording of an extraordinary hour-long phone rd call that then-president trump made personally to georgia s top elections official telling him he needed to find exactly the number of votes in the state that would allow trump to ti falsely be declared the winner there. now, in georgia, as in every state in the country, pressuring elections officials to interfere with the lawful administration
She is the district attorney to dekalb county. thank you for being here. absolutely.s. thank you for having me. so we re reporting this news, i believe for the first time. i ll stand corrected if it turns out anybody else has reported it. we think this may be the first time this news has been publicly reported. can you tell us from the c t perspective of somebody who has been a district attorney in georgia, if there is anything at all that we should read into or we should see this as a signifier for in terms of the state of the investigation, that the gentleman at the center of the investigation, his attorneys are meeting in person with the prosecutor s office? well, i think it signals that things are moving along. i think the fact that defense counsel met with the e prosecutors, that, in and of itself, is not remarkable. that happens all the time in georgia, even before charges are filed, particularly in high-profile cases where there may be speculation. i think what s interesti
Tonight, again, we can report that that investigation has now proceeded to the point where president trump s lawyers have started meeting in person with staff from the fulton county prosecutor s office. we will have more on that breaking news in just a moment. both in terms of what effect this appears to be having on the former president and in terms of how we should understand the status of that case, its seriousness and how far it has progressed, given that those in-person meetings have started. but, of course, this new news arrives at a time when the news gods are shaking the trees and a whole bunch of new stuff is , falling out along these lines. you may remember right before christmas we reported here on al this show on these documents. documents that were forged by trump-supporting republicans in the great state of wisconsin
Is there some sort of time line that we should be keeping in mind in terms of when decisions like that would need to happen or when you would expect them to happen in terms of the life span of this investigation? so let me point out, though, special grand juries are very different than regular grand juries. those are focused on criminal indictments, regular grand juries, and they turn over every two months. so a special grand jury does not produce indictments. it would produce a final report that would be critical in signaling what the citizens of fulton county, how they may be viewing the facts and evidence presented before them about this case. but in terms of timing, it would need to be specially impaneled the d.a. would need to write a moment or submit a motion to the chief judge of superior court asking for the special grand jury, and then there would be, really, i want to say, no time