A Georgia lawmaker has proposed legislation that would effectively bar the type of news media interviews given this week by the foreperson of a special grand jury that investigated Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
(Bloomberg) — A Georgia lawmaker has proposed legislation that would effectively bar the type of news media interviews given this week by the foreperson of a special grand jury that investigated Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The bill by state Senator Brandon Beach would toughen existing law by making it contempt of court to discuss “presentations” made to grand juries. Current law only bars grand jurors from discussing their deliberations, not what witnesses said.
Beach offered his proposal Thursday amid the uproar over media interviews by Emily Kohrs, who said the panel’s still-secret recommendations include indicting more than a dozen people. She even hinted strongly that one of the targets would be Trump.
Under Beach’s bill, the “entirety of the presentations, deliberations, and findings of the grand jury” would be void if any grand juror talked about what went on in the secret proceedings.
The judge overseeing the case told Bloomberg News the oath he gave to grand jurors is clear under Georgia law.
“It says what it says, which is you can’t talk about your deliberations, full stop,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney said Friday. “The foreperson was given the same instructions as the other grand jurors as to the scope of their oath and what could be shared with the media and what could not. There was no encouragement to do it or anything like that.”
After Kohrs’s comments received national attention, Trump’s lawyers said Thursday that her interviews displayed a lack of respect for the investigation that was “truly shocking to the legal conscience.”
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis convened a special grand jury in May to investigate the actions of Trump and his supporters after President Joe Biden’s win in the state. That panel had the power to subpoena witnesses and hear testimony but not indict – a task that would fall to a regular grand jury.
Beach, a state senator from Atlanta’s northern suburbs, was a key player in Trump’s efforts to derail the 2020 election results.
He was one of four legislators pushing for a special session to consider election fraud, helped draft a petition to allow the legislature to “take back the power to appoint electors,” and supported a lawsuit demanding that former Vice President Mike Pence refuse to certify any electors that had not be approved by the legislature.
Beach did not respond to requests for comment.
McBurney wouldn’t directly comment Friday on the interviews given by Kohrs.
“It’s not my role to comment on the propriety, as in was it wise to do that or whether it was helpful or hurtful to the district attorney’s ongoing investigation,” McBurney said.
Asked if Kohrs had violated her oath, McBurney said: “I think that she has elected to speak with the media and she is aware of what the parameters were per the session that I had with the grand jurors.”
McBurney said he told grand jurors: “The content of the final report is not deliberations. You cannot talk about your deliberations.”
The Georgia law is less restrictive than the federal oath, which bars grand jurors from talking about what witnesses said as well as their deliberations, said McBurney, a former federal prosecutor.
That difference “has caused much confusion among some of the commentators in that they’re applying a federal standard to a non-federal situation,” he said.
Willis has not commented on the Kohrs’s interviews.
At a court hearing on Jan. 24, a prosecutor in Willis’s office, Donald Wakeford, argued against making public the full report of the special grand jury, saying it would harm the office’s investigation. He suggested McBurney could direct grand jurors to not discuss the work of the panel.
“The only result of a grand juror talking about it would be to shed light on deliberations and also in the bargain, interfere with the ongoing criminal investigation, which their report was meant to be a part of,” Wakeford said.
McBurney said he was concerned that if he muzzled grand jurors, he could face an appeal based on restraint of speech and First Amendment grounds.
“I’m not interested in entering an order that we know is DOA – dead on appeal,” the judge said.
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.