“It was a surreal experience,” attorney and election-law expert Cleta Mitchell told The Federalist, referring to the hours-long questioning she faced when called before the Fulton County special purpose grand jury.
“I knew coming out of there that the whole thing was a loose cannon,” Mitchell said, adding that “they were definitely going to recommend indicting basically all the Trump allies — it was a completely political situation — nothing to do with the law. NOTHING.”
With Friday’s release of the grand jury’s final report, Mitchell, who had represented former President Trump in his challenge to the Georgia 2020 election, is now speaking out. The report confirms Mitchell’s intuition: The grand jury recommended District Attorney Fani Willis charge a total of 39 people — “basically all the Trump allies” — not merely the 19 individuals the get-Trump prosecutor eventually indicted. The large number includes Sen. Lindsey Graham and former Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, both of Georgia. Like Graham, Perdue, and Loeffler, Mitchell was recommended for charges but not named in the sprawling RICO indictment handed down last month.
Now that the report is “all out in the open,” Mitchell is sharing some details of her experience, and they reveal just how unhinged from reality the special purpose grand jury — or at least its forewoman, Emily Kohrs — was.
Mitchell explained to The Federalist that when testifying, she had taken with her copies of the election-contest complaint and the memorandum of law filed with the court in support of that complaint. “At some point, the chairwoman that you’ve seen on TV,” a reference to Kohrs who had made the media rounds shortly after the special purpose grand jury disbanded, “asked me what I had in my hands,” Mitchell explained. “I told her what it was, and she asked if she could see it,” Mitchell continued, telling The Federalist she gave Kohrs both.
“After a while, she asked ‘You say here, in the memorandum of law, that you are asking the court to award the electors to Donald Trump.’”
“I looked at her with a puzzled look on my face,” Mitchell told The Federalist. “I said, ‘Where do you read that?’”
Kohrs then handed the court document back to Mitchell, and the election lawyer looked at the paragraph she referenced. As Mitchell explained to The Federalist:
Nowhere in the memorandum of law does it say that the election should be awarded to Trump. We argued that there is precedent under Georgia law for the court to vacate the results and order a new election IF we were able to establish that the evidence proved there were more illegal votes, cast in violation of state law but counted and included in the certified total, than the margin of difference between the two candidates — the remedy is a new election. Alternatively, we argued that the state legislature has plenary power under the U.S. Constitution to meet and determine the electors — and I told her that.
In other words, the grand jury’s forewoman read “the memorandum of law to say something that is simply not there.” No wonder, then, that they recommended indicting 39 individuals!
While Mitchell had an opportunity to at least try to correct the misunderstanding about the legal documents, when it came to the Jan. 2, 2021, call between Trump and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which Mitchell participated, she had no such opportunity.
“They recommended indicting me for the phone call,” Mitchell noted, in reference to the 25-page grand jury report that pushed the Fulton County prosecutor to charge Mitchell for a variety of crimes related to that phone conversation. “But they did not ask me ONE question about the phone call. Not one,” Mitchell told The Federalist, adding that she testified for several hours, but the lawyers mainly pushed her on what they saw as “deficiencies” in the election contest.
The prosecutors also asked Mitchell questions such as, “Why did you dismiss the suit?”
“It was moot after the Georgia electors were certified on Jan. 6,” Mitchell would explain. But the Fulton County prosecutor’s team also questioned her on other aspects of the lawsuit such as why they didn’t “have well-known academics as our expert witnesses,” or why they didn’t seek to enforce a settlement agreement when the secretary of state’s attorneys failed to provide data they had promised.
These questions further cement the reality that what Democrats are trying to do is criminalize election challenges brought by Republicans. And while Mitchell was not charged, other lawyers were and so were the alternative slate of electors appointed to preserve Trump’s Georgia election challenge — even though legal precedent made clear the propriety of appointing alternative electors.
Mitchell’s recounting of the special purpose grand jury circus should terrify all Americans concerned with election integrity — and should wake up the country to just how political the pending charges against the 19 indicted individuals are.
Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion (forthcoming), National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prive—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland where you can read more about her greatest accomplishments—her dear husband and dear son. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.
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