Capitol Recap: Georgia governor must testify in 2020 probe, but not until after election

Judge denies Kemp bid to quash subpoena but allows delay

Gov. Brian Kemp, despite his efforts to quash a subpoena, will have to testify before a special grand jury investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and his allies’ broke any laws in trying to overturn the results of Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.

But Kemp succeeded in pushing his court appearance past Election Day.

The governor relied on two arguments in seeking to avoid appearing before the grand jury. He accused District Attorney Fani Willis of playing politics in pursuing the subpoena while he’s in the midst of a tough battle for reelection. He also claimed protection under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, which in many cases prevents the government from being sued.

Prosecutors from Willis’ office said during a hearing that they had gone out of their way to avoid politics and that sovereign immunity doesn’t apply because the grand jury is probing potential criminal violations of state law.

Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney gave Kemp a partial victory, ruling that the governor could appear before the grand jury at “some date soon after” the election on Nov. 8.

Among the issues prosecutors are interested in discussing with Kemp is the pressure Trump and others placed on him to call for a special session of the Georgia Legislature to undo Democrat Joe Biden’s narrow win in Georgia.

According to testimony, Kemp initially agreed to be interviewed by prosecutors on July 25. But a few days ahead of that date, one of the governor’s lawyers reportedly told the district attorney’s office that Kemp would only appear under certain conditions. One of those conditions was that neither side would make a video or audio recording of the interview.

Prosecutors rejected that demand, and a subpoena requiring Kemp’s appearance was issued Aug. 4. Kemp attorney Brian F. McEvoy then filed a motion to quash the subpoena on Aug. 17, the day before the governor was scheduled to appear before the special grand jury.

In his six-page opinion, McBurney spread the blame for the dispute between the governor’s camp and prosecutors.

McBurney wrote that Kemp’s subpoena “came only after weeks of tortured and tortuous negotiations over obtaining an interview with the Governor — the details of which do not bear repeating here, other than to note that both sides share responsibility for the torture and the tortuousness.”

Grand jury could be done by January

Work could end soon for the Fulton County special grand jury that’s investigating efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

District Attorney Fani Willis indicated that the probe could be done by January.

“There can’t be any predictions. As you know, many people are unsuccessfully fighting our subpoenas,” Willis said at a press conference. “We will continue to fight to make sure that the grand jury and the public get the truth. And I am very hopeful by the end of the year that I’ll be able to send this grand jury on their way.”

Willis said the special grand jury has worked its way through about 60% of its list of witnesses and she was happy with the pace of the inquest.

Trump lawyer John Eastman was among those who appeared this past week before the grand jury. He cited attorney-client privilege and pleaded the Fifth Amendment, refusing to answer questions or provide information that might incriminate him.

One matter of interest to the grand jury was Eastman’s part in a plan to press Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count the official Democratic electors in Georgia and a half-dozen other contested swing states on Jan. 6, 2021. Instead, under the plan, Pence would recognize a set of Trump electors.

That included 16 Georgia Republicans who signed paperwork in the state Capitol in December 2020 claiming to be the state’s duly elected presidential electors.

State election officials have upheld the results of the 2020 election based on three ballot counts and multiple investigations. Courts have also denied numerous challenges.

Prosecutors also hope at some point to question Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, who, according to subpoenas in a separate election security case, directed a tech firm to copy sensitive election files in Coffee County. The grand jury is also seeking testimony from former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and South Carolina U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, who lost a court fight this past week to quash his subpoena.

Someone who plans to cooperate is Atlanta attorney L. Lin Wood, who was one of the most vocal proponents of conspiracy theories following the 2020 election.

Wood said he learned through a lawyer who is representing him in a State Bar of Georgia disciplinary case that Willis’ office was preparing to serve him with a material witness subpoena to appear before the grand jury. He said prosecutors had not informed him that he is a target of the investigation.

“I didn’t do anything wrong, I’ll tell you that,” he said. “I’ll go down there and tell them what they want to know.”

Once the grand jury finishes its work, a new phase could begin, with Willis considering whether to seek charges based on the panel’s recommendations.

Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC

Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC

Willis faces whistleblower lawsuit

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has a new reason to go to court: She’s being sued.

Amanda Timpson, a former employee of the district attorney’s office, has filed a whistleblower lawsuit, claiming she was wrongfully terminated for uncovering misused funds. Timpson also says one of Willis’ subordinates racially discriminated against her for having a natural hairstyle.

Responding to the suit, a spokesman for the DA’s office said: “This employee was a holdover from the prior administration. Management attempted to find a role she could fill but was unsuccessful after transferring her within the office three times. All of her supervisors found her performance to be inadequate. Her failure to meet the standards of the new administration led to her termination.”

Timpson worked at the DA’s office from December 2018 to this past January, which means she started under six-time incumbent Paul Howard, starting as director of gang prevention and intervention. Willis defeated Howard in the 2020 election.

The suit alleges that Timpson opposed a plan for how the DA’s office would spend money from a gang prevention grant that she said was “tantamount to misappropriation of funds.” It also claims she discovered financial mismanagement in another program involving Atlanta Public Schools students.

Willis later demoted Timpson to a file clerk position.

Timpson then hired an attorney and informed the DA’s office that she was going to blow the whistle, according to the suit. She was fired soon after that.

She is now seeking money for pain and suffering along with lost earnings.

Credit: AJC

Republicans line up against student-debt plan

Georgia Republicans have joined in criticism of President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 of student loan debt for millions of Americans.

Conservatives have called the plan unfair to those who have either paid off their debts already or never took out student loans.

Supporters of the move have pointed to previous actions by the federal government to forgive debts, including those held by some Georgians in Congress who received six-figure loans through the Paycheck Protection Program during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic.

In June, before Biden even committed to canceling student debt, U.S. Rep. Drew Ferguson, R-West Point, filed legislation to prevent the president from taking such an action. Ferguson’s measure, which he called the Student Loan Accountability Act, hasn’t made any progress in the Democratic-controlled House. But many GOP lawmakers have pointed to it as a way to stop Biden’s plan if they gain majorities in Congress in November.

Biden could then veto it.

U.S. Rep. Austin Scott, R-Tifton, has signed onto Ferguson’s bill as a co-sponsor.

He also joined other members of the House in sending a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reminding her that she said during a weekly press conference last summer that the president needs congressional approval prior to canceling student debt.

Credit: AJC

Walker-Warnock debate seems less likely

“Any day of the week” is looking more and more like “never going to happen.”

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker has said since October that he is ready to debate Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock.

Some were skeptical. After all, Walker skipped all opportunities to debate his opponents in the Republican primary and is prone to gaffes.

But in June, Walker appeared eager to face Warnock.

“Name the place and the time and we can get it on,” the Republican said.

Warnock named three places.

He committed to debates in Atlanta, Macon and Savannah. The format was the same for all three: Reporters from Georgia would question the candidates, and there would be no studio audience. All three events would be broadcast statewide.

Two months later, Walker agreed to a debate in Savannah —just not the one Warnock had picked.

Walker’s debate would also feature Georgia reporters asking questions, but with a studio audience to include groups chosen by each campaign. There also would be a post-debate “spin room.”

For now, there’s no debate. In fact, with early voting set to begin in about six weeks, there appears to be no conversation between the Walker and Warnock camps to find a venue and format that’s satisfactory to both.

Georgians help fuel boost in patients at Florida abortion clinics

Abortion clinics in Florida have grown busier since Georgia’s restrictions took effect.

Planned Parenthood centers in northern, southern and eastern Florida saw a 40% increase in patients seeking abortions after a U.S. appeals court cleared the way for Georgia’s “heartbeat law,” spokeswoman Christina Noce said. The measure bans abortions in most cases once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, about six weeks into a pregnancy and before many people know they are pregnant.

The number of patients increased by 40% at the organization’s center in Jacksonville and 27% at its site in Tallahassee, the two clinics closest to Georgia.

The majority of out-of-state patients come from Georgia, an average of 60 to 70 a week, the organization said.

‘Notlanta’ is not doing so well in educational attainment

Charlie Hayslett, who studies the disparities between metro Atlanta and the remainder of the state on his blog, “Trouble in God’s Country,” recently turned his spotlight on educational attainment.

As he put it in the headline for his blog post, “it ain’t pretty.”

Hayslett created a formula he calls the Trouble in God’s Country Educational Attainment Index, using data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey for 2016-2020.

It takes away a point for each percentage point of a county’s adult population over 25 that failed to finish high school. It awards a point for each percentage point of that same population that only finished high school. That climbs to two points for each percentage point that earned some college credit and perhaps got a technical school degree. Three points are given for each percentage point that got at least a four-year college degree.

Hayslett breaks the state into two categories: the 12 counties that make up metro Atlanta and the remaining 147 that he calls “Notlanta.”

Metro Atlanta does very well on Hayslett’s index. If it were a state, it would rank third in the country, behind only Colorado and Massachusetts.

Notlanta? Not so much.

If it were a state, it would rank just above last-place West Virginia and a notch below Mississippi.

A key concern that Hayslett raises is a decline he sees in the state’s population centers outside metro Atlanta. He notes that while they all have boosted their scores for educational attainment since 1970, they have not kept pace with metro Atlanta.

For example, Dougherty County ranked ninth among Georgia counties in 1970 but has fallen to 50th in the past five decades.

That’s critical, he says, because “any meaningful rural revitalization strategy will have to begin in these major regional population centers.”

And if it doesn’t begin?

“If these regional centers slip into some kind of irreversible decline,” Hayslett writes, noting that such a fate may already be occurring in Dougherty, “they’ll take their neighboring rural counties down with them.”

Political expedience

Plenty of cash to spread around: David Perdue’s campaign for governor couldn’t get past May’s GOP primary, but the former U.S. senator could still have an impact on November’s elections. He still has more than $4.2 million in his federal campaign account left over from his unsuccessful bid for reelection to the Senate in 2020. Federal law limits what Perdue can do with the money, but he’s allowed to transfer it to other political candidates, campaigns or parties, with restrictions for state-level candidates. He could also send the cash to Gov. Brian Kemp’s leadership committee, something GOP insiders say would fulfill his promise to do whatever is necessary to defeat Democrat Stacey Abrams.
Campaign debt: Ten years after he ran for president, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s campaign is still in the red. Business Insider recently reported that, according to the former Georgia congressman’s latest filing earlier this summer, Gingrich’s campaign still owes $4.63 million to consultants and vendors. On the positive side, Newt 2012 had $240.78 cash on hand at the end of the last reporting period.

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