Fulton County special grand jury completes its criminal investigation into Donald Trump. Now comes the fun part.
When Fulton County Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis convinced a judge to let her empanel a special grand jury nearly a year ago, it was because she was tired of having to wait for regular grand juries to become available. She wanted her own dedicated grand jury so she could move ahead at full speed.
The one catch with a special grand jury is that it can’t bring indictments. Once its work is done, the prosecutor then has to take the completed criminal case to a regular grand jury and have it bring the indictments.
Yesterday we all learned that the Fulton County special grand jury has completed its criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s election crimes. There’s a lot of media hubbub about whether the judge who approved the special grand jury will now publicly release some or all of the special grand jury’s report, but that’s a red herring.
The point of a special grand jury isn’t to issue a report to the public. The point of a special grand jury is to tee up criminal indictments so the DA can have a regular grand jury spit out those indictments. This is just a formality, as the DA simply has to quickly present the completed case to a regular grand jury and get the indictments.
So even though we’re about to hear a lot of media buzz over a court hearing about a special grand jury report, that’s not the story. That’s just judicial oversight after the fact. The real (and only) story here is that the Fulton County DA now has completed criminal cases in hand against Donald Trump and other targets, and simply has to present it to a grand jury to bring indictments. We’re now that close. Any procedural moves about this “report” will not in any way interfere, impede, or slow down what’s important here, which is that Trump is now finally on the verge of being criminally indicted.
