scheduling because the sentencing, of course, is right before the rnc. [laughter] pete: paul, you mentioned the statement from al baker, the state office of court administration if spokesperson, you referenced part of it. we re going to read the whole thing, judge merchan was assigned to supervise the grand juries that investigated the trump organization and alan weisselberg as well as donald trump from a rotation of judges available to supervise special grand juries. he was in turn assigned to the trial that arose from that information which is the court s look beyond longstanding practice since the judges has some familiarity with these often-complex cases and manage them more efficiently. he started on it, so he has to do everything, every as aspect related to it? yeah, that s essentially the argument. and, you know, you actually can make a pretty good counterargument which is that in order to insure fairness in a a second trial, maybe a different judge should be doing the trump
her county she will bring an indictment if she thinks she can close the case. we ve heard obviously from special grand jurors earlier that they expected to bring indictments. we ve heard that there won t be any surprises. so we do expect something from the d.a. obviously, the tension in atlanta is getting really high. those staffers now have been told to work remotely. they re down to about 70% staff, as your package said. so we are anticipating anything, really any day now. we know it could be over the next couple of weeks. special grand juries meet in two panels during the week. all eyes are certainly on the fulton county courthouse and the d.a. will come out immediately after those are announced, when they re announced, and explain the decision whether she decided to go forward or not. let me ask you about that tension for a moment. when it comes to the security concerns. you have new reporting about a warning that d.a. willis sent to county leaders. and i just want to read a litt
happens. but again the prosecutor and judge have to proceed with a bit of caution because this could really jeopardize the case in the end. i want to ask you about another legal case that is coming up in georgia. of course they are seating another grand jury after having already sat a special grand jury. why does another grand jury need to be seated in this case? it was interesting to see these two things, i had not seen that before. well, georgia is unique maybe not unique, but particular in the sense that they have a provision for the special grand juries impanelled for a specific purpose and can recommend charges but not actually vote on them or bring them. after something goes to a special grand jury, then it is brought to a regular grand jury and that is what is happening here. this group of 23 jurors will have to now vote on the charges that are presented to them. s most of the time they tend to vote on charges. prosecutors have already vetted they believe a crime has been
related to election fraud in 2020, there was going to have to be a new grand jury impanelled to hear it because the original grand jury that we heard all about last year, that was a special grand jury and under georgia law, special grand juries cannot bring criminal indictments. so all they could do is make a recommendation with respect to charges and potential individuals who should be charged. we heard some hints given to us by the foreperson of that grand jury, but they themselves could not bring the actual charges so there was going to be to have a new grand jury impanelled, a new grand jury that could bring criminal charges against anybody. so in terms of timing, we have gotten a lot of hints about timing because willis, for example, wrote a letter to the chief judge in her court system. the state court system. saying that for example, she was going to ask members of her own
time but trump continues to b vulnerable in a few othe pending criminal cases for which he could be indicted and potentially convicted. down in georgia, still awaitin a decision from the fulton county district attorney, fani willis, on whether to pres charges in her investigation into election interference int the 2020 presidential race willis has previously informed several people that they are targets of the investigation including trump s former personal lawyer, rudy giuliani and david schaffer, the head o the georgia republican party the special grand jury in that instance issued its fina report back in january now, in georgia, special grand juries do not have the power t indict but emily kohrs, served as the foreperson of that grand jur said in subsequent interview that the panel had recommended indictments for more than dozen people and when asked whether tha included the former president, xi told nbc news, quote, potentially, it might. and finally, there is jack smith, the justi