Judge Says GA Special Grand Jury Must Release Some Findings in Trump Report Transcript

A major development in the Fulton County grand jury investigation of former President Donald Trump and others.

A judge now ordering a partial release of the grand jury report, but not any of the grand jury recommendations on whether anyone should be indicted for a crime. (00:14) Senior I-Team reporter Dale Russell has followed this case since former President Trump lost the 2020 election. Dale?

That's right. Since last May, when the grand jury was first selected, most people wanted to know the same thing. Did anyone commit a crime? If so, who? Who is it? And what did they do? Well, based on Judge Robert McBurney's ruling, we're closer to finding out, but still don't know all the answers.

We are asking that the report not be released.

Some three weeks ago, Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis argued before Judge Robert McBurney to keep her secret grand jury findings on Donald Trump and others secret.

We believe the report should be released now.

Tom Clyde, representing a number of media outlets, said the grand jury itself asked that their report be released.

There's enormous public interest in what they have said.

Now. Judge McBurney has ruled, ordering the release of portions of the report. But for now, keeping secret whether grand jurors felt anyone should have been prosecuted.

Most of the report won't be made public until the district attorney completes her investigation and who knows when that's going to be.

Beginning early last year for eight months a parade of witnesses, many well known like Governor Brian Kemp and former President Trump's National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, appeared at the Fulton County Courthouse to testify before a special grand jury. The criminal grand jury has been investigating whether former President Trump and his allies illegally interfered in Georgia's last presidential election. Earlier this month, the grand jury finished its work and grand jurors voted to recommend that its report be published. But due to complex laws governing grand juries, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney invited key players into court to argue when and how much of that report should be made public.

We would expect the conclusion to tell us one way or the other whether the grand jury thinks that the crimes have been committed and what those crimes were.

Georgia State University Law Professor Clark Cunningham says Judge McBurney ordered he would release the introduction and conclusions of the report, as well as a section in which grand jurors felt there was a possibility some witnesses may have lied under oath.

Perjury in front of the special grand jury is itself a crime that can be indicted.

Now, prosecutor Fani Willis issued a statement saying, "Judge McBurney's order is legally sound and consistent with her request." She has no plans to appeal. We don't know right now whether or not the media group and their attorney, Tom Clyde, the ones who wanted the full report made public plan to appeal or not. Courtney, Tom.

So, we probably will be seeing this this week?

Yeah, Thursday we're going to see something. We don't know if it's going to be redacted at this point in time. It doesn't sound like it's going to be because I think Fani Willis would've done that, but we'll see something and we'll go from there.

Yeah, it'd be interesting to see what that grand jury came up with.

I think that everybody wants to know. It's the new grand jury's convening in Fulton County in about two weeks, I think that may be when we get the answer.

Well, you've been covering this for a while now.

It's been years [inaudible 00:03:41].

Yeah. All right. Well, Dale, I know you'll keep us updated.

I will.

Thanks.