August 14, 2023 - Trump indicted in Georgia 2020 election subversion probe

Former Georgia Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan said Monday that his testimony earlier that day to the Atlanta-area grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state was “very serious” and “intense.” 

He said "it was a very intense meeting" that lasted for "maybe an hour-plus."

"I can tell you that there was the highest level of attention in that room for folks with the district attorney's office to the jurors. It was just an extremely intense period of time, and everybody was prepared. It's just like walking into a perfect meeting where everybody is prepared and ready to go to work and that's really what it was, very, very serious work," he told CNN.

Duncan said the grand jury "certainly wanted to hear the facts as I knew them."

"That's what this whole process has been about — even bigger than just the grand jury. I think this is an important pivot point for America — we've got to get this out of the system," he told CNN.

He continued, "We can't just be half baked with conspiracy theories and kind of just pat it down. We either have to validate that these conspiracy theories are real or they're not."

Duncan – who is a CNN contributor — declined to detail what exactly he discussed during his appearance before the grand jury, which was moved up a day. 

“I know this isn't the answer you want to hear but it was a very wide-ranging conversation across a lot of different topics,” he told Burnett when asked what his testimony was focused on. 

Watch:

Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney, the presiding judge overseeing the grand jury that’s currently hearing the Donald Trump 2020 election subversion case, told reporters in his courtroom that he’s expecting to stay for about one more hour tonight.

The grand jury is still meeting. The timing of any potential indictment is unclear. 

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is leading the probe, planned for her presentation to the grand jury presentation to last one or two days.

Former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan is finished testifying to the Fulton County grand jury hearing testimony in the Donald Trump 2020 election subversion case.

Duncan was seen leaving the courthouse in Atlanta several moments ago.

He also said the 2020 election was “fair and legal” and that he hopes more Republicans will reach that conclusion.  

“Let’s have a discussion about the facts. If we have a discussion about the facts, I like the outcome,” he said. 

Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney, the presiding judge overseeing the grand jury, briefly stepped into the courtroom where reporters are assembled and said, “just hang in there, I am too." 

More background: Duncan has been a sharp critic of Trump’s efforts to upend Georgia’s election results. He recently told CNN that he was “embarrassed” when Rudy Giuliani, a former attorney for Trump, and other allies of the former president appeared before Georgia state lawmakers.

While Duncan was president of the Georgia state Senate at the time, he told CNN he did not “sanction” those meetings, and that they were not “official hearings.”

The Fulton County grand jury, which has been meeting all day, is still hearing testimony in the Donald Trump 2020 election subversion case.

Independent journalist George Chidi — who was subpoenaed to testify and is inside the courthouse in Atlanta, Georgia, — posted on social media that the proceedings are still underway.

He said a separate witness, Geoff Duncan, former Georgia lieutenant governor and CNN contributor, is currently testifying. 

Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney, the presiding judge overseeing the grand jury, is still in the building and is waiting in his chambers.

He previously said he is prepared to keep his courtroom open past the regular 5 p.m. ET close time, if prosecutors ask him to do so.

"You all may want to get dinner,” McBurney told reporters in the courtroom shortly after 4 p.m. ET. He returned to court around 5 p.m. ET and said, “You didn't get dinner? You should have gotten dinner."

BBC staffers ordered several boxes of pizza for the reporters currently waiting inside the clerk’s office at the courthouse, according to a CNN reporter in the room. 

Court officials in the clerk’s office have filed out for the day, though some can still be heard working at their cubicles.

The doors to the clerk’s office have been locked — the journalists assembled in the room can stay inside, but nobody else can enter, and once you leave there is no way back in. 

The Fulton County Superior Court said in a statement that a document Reuters reported had been posted to the court website earlier Monday showing possible Donald Trump charges is not official.  

Reuters reported earlier that a document listing criminal charges against Trump was briefly posted, and then removed, from the official website of the Fulton County court.

The document, which Reuters has since posted on its own website, appears to describe a criminal case titled “the state of Georgia vs. Donald John Trump.” 

CNN has not verified the document, its origin, or whether it was posted on the court website. 

The statement from the court also called the two-page document a “fictitious document.” The court hasn’t said that the document ever appeared on its website, as Reuters reported. 

The former president has already capitalized on the controversy to attack Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s office. 

Trump attorneys Drew Findling and Jennifer Little said in a statement that the “proposed indictment” was already circulating among prosecutors and court officials “before the grand jury even deliberated.”

Former President Donald Trump’s team is preparing for a potential indictment to be delivered imminently in the Fulton County District Attorney’s grand jury investigation into his efforts to overturn to the 2020 election results in Georgia, his advisers tell CNN.

His team has begun lining up surrogates and allies — as well as preparing pre-written responses — to react to new charges, they said, a strategy they have now implemented three times before when responding to previous indictments brought against the former president.

A Fulton County Superior Court judge who has presided over key parts of the Georgia probe against former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn 2020 election results in the Peach State has demonstrated a willingness to speak frankly to both sides of the contentious proceeding.

It’s unclear whether Judge Robert McBurney will preside over Trump’s trial, if he is charged. But McBurney is presiding over the Atlanta-area grand jury that’s hearing the Trump election subversion case in the state.

His rulings and temperament have already had a deep impact on the closely watched matter, in which indictments are expected to be handed up from a grand jury this week.

Here are key things to know about the judge and his role in the probe:

McBurney, a Harvard-educated lawyer who was appointed by then-Georgia Republican Gov. Nathan Deal in 2012, oversaw the special grand jury that collected evidence in the investigation.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, a Democrat, is expected to seek charges against more than a dozen individuals when she presents her case before a grand jury, sources familiar with the matter have told CNN. Charges could include racketeering, conspiracy and more.

Last month, in a major ruling, McBurney rejected Trump’s request to throw out the evidence collected by the special grand jury and to disqualify Willis from overseeing the criminal investigation because of her public comments about the case.

He continued: “Put differently, the District Attorney’s Office has been doing a fairly routine – and legally unobjectionable – job of public relations in a case that is anything but routine.”

However, in a major ruling earlier in the investigation, McBurney blocked Willis from investigating Burt Jones, then a Republican state senator, who was one of the fake electors who signed an illegitimate Electoral College certificate. (Jones is now Georgia’s lieutenant governor.)

Willis had hosted a campaign fundraiser for Jones’ Democratic opponent in the Georgia lieutenant governor’s race, Charley Bailey, for which McBurney criticized Willis. “It’s a ‘What are you thinking’ moment,” he said at the time. “The optics are horrific.”

In his recent ruling denying Trump’s bid to shut down the probe, McBurney referenced the Jones dispute, saying Willis had “injected direct partisanship into a criminal investigation that should remain as politically neutral as possible” when it came to Jones. But McBurney concluded that Willis didn’t cross that line with Trump.

McBurney was previously a former federal prosecutor in the Northern District of Georgia and the state prosecutor in Fulton County, according to the Fulton County court website.

In some other notable cases, McBurney overturned Georgia’s six-week abortion ban before it was reinstated by the Supreme Court last year. In his opinion, he wrote that when Georgia lawmakers passed the bill and Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed it into law in 2019, “the supreme law of this land unequivocally was — and had been for nearly half a century — that laws unduly restricting abortion before viability were unconstitutional.”

Read more about McBurney.

Fulton County, Georgia, Judge Robert McBurney, who is presiding over the grand jury currently hearing the Donald Trump 2020 election subversion case, said Monday that he is prepared to keep his courtroom open beyond the regular closing time of 5 p.m. ET — if asked by prosecutors to keep it open. 

McBurney made this announcement in open court, in the presence of assembled reporters.

Marc Short, the former chief of staff to then-Vice President Mike Pence, told CNN's Jake Tapper Monday that Pence, amid efforts by Donald Trump's team to stall certification of the 2020 election using "fake electors," asked the Senate parliamentarian for guidance on certifying the vote.

Short said on CNN that Pence's team met with Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian, on January 3, 2021: "She was very helpful because she actually gave context to say, 'we actually get people sending in fake slates every four years — and they're meaningless.' And so it was important for her to stipulate that unless they're certified by the state it doesn't really matter."

He added that MacDonough provided Pence and his team with "traditional scripts" of this sentiment that the then-vice president's general counsel and head of legislative affairs used to alter Pence's remarks on the Senate floor to certify the election results on January 6, 2021.

Remarks that were altered from their usual state under the guidance of MacDonough "because the vice president wanted the American people who were watching to understand there had only been one slate that had been certified, 'that is what I am authenticating.'"

Trump was charged last month by special counsel Jack Smith for trying to “subvert the legitimate election results and change electoral votes” with the fake elector plot. Separate charges were also brought last month against 16 Michigan Republicans who served as fake electors in 2020.

Michigan was one of the seven battleground states where the Trump campaign put forward slates of fake electors as part of their plan to undermine the Electoral College process, and potentially disrupt Congress’ certification of the 2020 election results.

Short said the "fake electors" were put up by Trump's team so Pence could delay the election certification and send the fate of the presidency to the Republican-controlled House.

"So even though it sounds like, 'oh we'll just buy us more time and let them rethink this,' none of the states were going to rethink it, they had already certified," Short said. "But separately, the real intention was, if we force a delay this kicks the vote into the House of Representatives."