ATLANTA (CN) — Local GOP leaders in Georgia criticized the Fulton County district attorney Thursday for requesting a special grand jury to aid in her investigation of whether former President Donald Trump broke the law by pressuring state officials to recalculate the 2020 presidential election results in his favor.
In a letter Thursday, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis told the chief judge of Fulton County’s Superior Court that the move was needed because a “significant number of witnesses and prospective witnesses have refused to cooperate with the investigation absent a subpoena requiring their testimony.”
But the heads of county branches of the Republican Party in metro Atlanta adamantly disagreed with her request.
"It's a political witch hunt," said Salleigh Grubbs, chairwoman of Cobb County Republican Party. "Democrats are just trying to prevent him from running in future offices."
Sammy Baker, party chairman in nearby Gwinnett County, echoed her sentiment.
"I think it's a show," he said. "The president is a national issue, not a county issue."
Willis has said the criminal investigation includes potential “solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local governmental bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office and any involvement in violence or threats related to the election’s administration.”
The district attorney's probe was launched last February and is centered around a phone call Trump made to Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021, in which he said, "I just want to find 11,780 votes." That shift would have put Trump ahead of then-candidate Joe Biden.
The call is just one of many efforts made by Trump to support his baseless claims that the election was fraudulent and stolen by the Democratic Party.
In her letter to the judge, Willis says Raffensperger is "an essential witness" to the investigation but will not participate in an interview without a subpoena from her office.
She also cited an interview Raffensperger did with NBC News’ Chuck Todd in October in which he said, "Well, there's nothing to recalculate because if you look at the numbers, the numbers are the numbers. And so you can slice that, dice that any way you want. But at the end of the day, President Trump came up 11,800 votes short."
While a regular Fulton County grand jury hears hundreds of felony cases over two months, a special grand jury has 16 to 23 members who focus on a single case for as long as the prosecutors need, which Willis said is “appropriate to the complexity of the facts and circumstances involved.”
The DA also requested that a Fulton County superior court judge be assigned to assist and supervise the special grand jury in carrying out its investigation and duties.
Her grand jury request must be approved by a majority of the county’s superior court judges.
In November, Raffensperger was also contacted by U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and top Trump ally, who cast doubt on Georgia's signature-matching law in a private phone call. Raffensperger later told CNN that the conversation "was just an implication of, 'Look hard and see how many ballots you could throw out.'"
Although Trump urged election officials to call off the statewide audit, the full manual tally of all votes cast confirmed that the original machine count accurately found Biden to be the winner of the election.
Georgia federal judges have rejected a lawsuit brought forth by the Trump administration and one by his former lawyer Sidney Powell claiming the election was rigged in the state.
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