Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who oversees the special purpose grand jury, said he would consider the arguments before ruling, but did not give a time frame for his decision.
Separately Thursday, McBurney rejected another attempt to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from the investigation.
In court Thursday, Fulton County Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade said the state’s position is that Kemp should be expected to testify “just as a number of the 30-plus witnesses have” up to this point. Wade’s detail is the first indication of the number of people who have testified so far.
The DA’s office says Kemp is not considered a target in the special grand jury investigation, but is a “uniquely informed” witness who testifies, including a December 2020 phone call in which Trump allegedly tried to pressure Kemp to state lawmakers to overturn then-President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
Trump also urged Kemp to “get tough” and improperly reject mail-in ballots — enough to “flip” statewide results in post-election tweets in November 2020.
“The governor doesn’t think it’s outside the law. It’s just beyond that particular subpoena because there are other mechanisms if the state needs or wants to investigate the official activities of the governor, that legal authority exists,” argued Derek Bauer, one of the attorneys representing Kemp.
Kemp, who is up for re-election in November, was originally scheduled to provide sworn, taped testimony for a special purpose grand jury this summer. He was scheduled for a voluntary interview on July 25, his lawyers said in a court filing, but the interview was “unilaterally canceled” after Kemp’s legal team requested its scope.
Wade told the court Thursday that they will treat the governor just as they have treated other witnesses throughout the special grand jury process. On the morning Kemp would come on the witness stand, they would share “buckets” of topics with him and his lawyer that they would like to talk to him about.
McBurney told the court on Thursday it was a “tried and true method that has worked for many people in a similar position”.
The prosecutor’s office also told the court Thursday that the governor’s adviser asked that certain conditions be met before the interview, including receiving all questions in advance. It was after the communication broke down that the DA’s office issued a subpoena, Kemp’s attorneys said.
Fulton County prosecutors also requested any document or physical evidence from Gov. Kemp’s office that could explain what Trump or those working on his behalf were “thinking or doing” and any correspondence or communication between the parties, according to court documents. deposits.
The governor’s legal team claims the request to appear before the special purpose grand jury is suspiciously timed to coincide with the “crescendo” in Kemp’s re-election campaign and is not “driven by a genuine investigative need for information.”
“This is happening, coincidentally or otherwise, as this high-profile and politically charged investigation and Governor Kemp’s role in it reaches a crescendo. The intersection of law and politics in this way, we believe, should not happen on the eve of an election, and despite our willingness to get involved, we’re just asking that the rule of law be closely followed in this matter,” Kemp’s lawyer, Brian McEvoy, told the court.
McBurney previously said it would be highly unlikely the special purpose grand jury report would come before the election and promised it would not be an “October surprise,” released close to the November election.
The judge makes an effort to exclude Willis from the investigation
Also Thursday, McBurney shot down an effort by a handful of pro-Trump fake voters to disqualify Willis from the investigation. The group of 11 fraudulent voters, who were told they were targets of the Georgia investigation, had argued that because the judge barred Willis from investigating Georgia GOP Sen. Bert Jones, Willis should also be disqualified from investigating him. rest of the Republican party. fake voters. McBurney didn’t buy their argument. The fake voters “have provided no evidence that the DA (or any member of her staff) has done anything to suggest a possible political motive for investigating them — beyond the banal observation that they are active Republicans and the DA is not ,” McBurney wrote. McBurney added that the nature of the investigation — which is investigating the Republican Party’s efforts to overturn election results in the Peach State — was at heart political in nature. “The proceeding is inherently ‘political’ in the simple and unusual sense that politicians and leaders of a particular political party allegedly made efforts to defeat the will of the Georgia electorate,” the judge wrote. “A prosecutor pursuing such a case is not automatically biased and partisan — and subject to disqualification — because of the common political ties of the subjects (and targets) of the investigation.” In a particularly pointed footnote, McBurney added that, “It escapes the undersigned how an investigation into allegations of Republican interference in the 2020 Georgia general election would have any list of targets other than Republicans.” The group of 11 fake voters has now tried twice — and twice failed — to disqualify Willis from the investigation she is overseeing in Georgia. CNN’s Niah Humphrey contributed to this report.
