The sheriff of Fulton County, Ga., said on Tuesday that if former President Donald J. Trump were to be indicted in connection with efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the state, he would not receive special treatment, and would be booked and photographed like any other defendant.
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Another subpoena went to George Chidi, an Atlanta-area journalist who discovered a meeting in the State Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, of 16 Republicans who tried to cast bogus Electoral College votes for Mr. Trump, even though his defeat in Georgia had already been recertified. Mr. Chidi says that he was falsely told by someone at the meeting that it concerned “education,” and that he was kicked out.
Because he was “lied to and thrown out,” Mr. Chidi wrote this week in The Intercept, “it confirmed that the legislators were acting in secret, that they didn’t want the press or public to know what they were doing.”
The 16 Republicans were also named as targets; as of May, more than half of them had taken immunity deals. Their meeting is likely to be an element of an alleged corrupt scheme that prosecutors will describe for grand jurors if they seek racketeering charges.
Both Ms. Jordan and Mr. Chidi have already appeared before a separate “special purpose” grand jury that investigated the election meddling efforts in Georgia but lacked indictment power. That panel’s recommendations have largely been kept secret, although the forewoman strongly hinted in an interview that the recommendations included indicting Mr. Trump, among others.
Mr. Chidi, in an interview, said he was concerned about prosecutors making “a habit” of subpoenaing reporters. In his article for The Intercept, he said he would probably testify, because he was given assurances that he would be asked only questions relating to what he saw that day.
As indictments have drawn closer in recent weeks, lawyers for Mr. Trump, along with the state’s Republican Party, have become more aggressive in pushing back against the investigation. A state party-created website likens news coverage of the bogus Trump electors to stories about Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster.
Last month, the State Supreme Court unanimously rejected a long-shot attempt by the Trump legal team to scuttle the investigation ahead of indictments. And on Monday, the presiding judge in Superior Court, Robert C.I. McBurney, suggested that Mr. Trump’s lawyers were gumming up the legal process with frivolous filings, and encouraged them to follow professional standards “before burdening other courts with unnecessary and unfounded legal filings.”
Mr. Trump has taken personal shots at Ms. Willis, saying she was a “racist” and calling for street demonstrations if he is indicted.
Over the weekend, Ms. Willis, who is Black, forwarded an offensive email she recently received to a number of local officials. She called the email, which referred to her with an inflammatory and racist epithet, as “pretty typical and what I have come to expect,” adding, “I am sending to you in case you are unclear on what I and my staff have come accustomed to over the last two and a half years. I guess I am sending this as a reminder that you should stay alert over the month of August and stay safe.”
In a reply, the county’s solicitor general, Keith E. Gammage, wrote that he was “deeply offended” and that the email was “meant to threaten, harass and intimidate, not just you, but all of us.”