Georgia grand jury says some witnesses may have lied in Donald Trump election probe

A special grand jury investigating alleged interference by former president Donald Trump in the 2020 US presidential election in the state of Georgia has said some witnesses may have lied under oath, marking the panel’s first report on one of the country’s most significant electoral controversies.

A majority of the grand jury believes that “one or more” of the witnesses who testified before it may have committed perjury and recommended indictments be sought by the district attorney as supported by the evidence, according to portions of a report unsealed by a Georgia court on Thursday. The names of witnesses who may have lied under oath were not shared.

Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator for South Carolina, and Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who led Trump’s legal challenges disputing his loss in the 2020 election, were among the witnesses who appeared before the panel, according to media reports. Graham told a CNN reporter that he was confident in his grand jury testimony.

By a unanimous vote, the grand jury found that “no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election”, according to the report.

The document is a first glimpse into the grand jury’s probe of whether Trump and his allies attempted to tamper with electoral results in Georgia as the former president’s efforts to cling to power and his unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud in the polls face judicial scrutiny.

Between June and December 2022, the grand jury acquired evidence from or linked to 75 witnesses, most of which was provided in person under oath, the report said.

The Fulton county district attorney has previously said that decisions on whether to bring indictments stemming from the probe was “imminent”.

Following his loss to President Joe Biden, Trump pressured Georgia’s top election official to alter the state’s voting results, according to media reports.

Trump had urged Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, to “find” the missing votes he needed to win the state and claimed there was “no way” he had lost, according to a transcript and audio clips of a telephone conversation that were posted on The Washington Post’s website at the time. Raffensperger forcefully rejected Trump’s plan. The former president has defended the phone call, describing it as “perfect”.

The Georgia probe is among the many legal challenges involving Trump as he gears up to run for office again next year. Last December, a congressional committee investigating the attacks on the US Capitol on January 6 2021 released a final report saying the former president was the “central cause” of the violence.

That panel found Trump and his allies made several attempts to “corruptly obstruct, impede, or influence the counting of electoral votes on January 6th, and thereby overturn the lawful results of the election”.

Trump also faces a criminal investigation linked to documents with classification markings found by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida over the summer. He is accused of potential violations of the Espionage Act as well as the mishandling of public documents and the obstruction of a judicial inquiry.