Prosecutors from Georgia’s Fulton county have granted immunity to at least eight individuals under investigation for conspiring to overturn Georgia’s vote in the 2020 presidential election, a lawsuit filed Friday found.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to announce this summer whether former President Donald Trump and others will be charged with crimes related to interference in the 2020 election.
Attorney Kimberly Bourroughs Debrow represented 10 of the 16 suspected bogus voters who may have offered to cast electoral college votes for Trump, even though Democrat Joe Biden won Georgia and the right to all 16 of the state’s electoral college votes.
Debrow said in a lawsuit Friday that prosecutors “made actual, written offers of immunity to these eight voters in April 2023, but not to the remaining two.” That led to the unimmunized clients getting new attorneys, Debrow said in the filing.
With immunity, those eight would be free to testify against any of the defendants.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to reveal in the summer whether Donald Trump and his allies will be charged with alleged Georgia election fraud
Trump, who is seeking the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has denied wrongdoing and accused Willis, an elected Democrat, of targeting him for political gain
Attorney Kimberly Bourroughs Debrow, pictured here, represents 10 of the 16 accused bogus voters, including all eight who have entered into immunity deals
Willis’ investigation began shortly after a taped phone call in January 2021 in which Trump asked Georgia’s top election official to “find” the votes to overturn Biden’s victory.
Last July, the OM revealed that each of the 16 people who signed the false voter certificate was a target of its investigation.
The 16 bogus voters met at the Capitol on December 14, 2020, and signed a certificate falsely declaring Trump won the presidential election and declaring themselves the state’s “duly elected and qualified” voters.
Willis’ office has yet to decide whether or not to press charges against the bogus voters.
In letters sent to law enforcement agencies late last month, she advised them to prepare adequate security as she plans to announce her indictment decisions between mid-July and early September.
Debrow’s filing on Friday came in response to a motion filed last month by Willis to bar the defense attorney from further participation in proceedings arising from the investigation.
Debrow called Willis’s motion “reckless, frivolous, abusive and utterly baseless.”
When Willis informed the 16 rogue voters last summer that they could be charged in the investigation, 11 of them were represented by Debrow and another attorney, Holly Pierson, who were hired by the state’s Republican Party.
A special grand jury in Fulton County interviewed 75 witnesses over seven months
Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney oversaw the special grand jury hearings in the investigation
Fulton County Superior Judge Robert McBurney, who oversaw the special grand jury seated to support the investigation, ruled in November that Georgia Republican Party chairman David Shafer could not share an attorney with the other 10 bogus voters. represented by Debrow and Pierson.
The new filing says that when the district attorney’s office offered immunity deals to eight of its 10 clients, it consulted with her other two clients and they determined that the “most conservative and practical course of action” was for those two people to have their own attorneys. . She said they have since.
In her motion last month, Willis said that in interviews with her team in April, some of Debrow’s clients said another fake voter she represents “committed acts that violate Georgia law.”
The motion also says some of Debrow’s clients said they were never advised of possible immunity deals last summer, despite Pierson telling the court they had spoken to their clients and none of them were interested.
Debrow’s representation of 10 of the bogus voters represents clear conflict and had become an “impracticable and ethical mess,” Willis wrote.
Willis “falsely but publicly defamed the integrity of two respected and fellow members of the bar based on fictitious allegations known to be untrue,” Debrow wrote.
“Such reckless and unprofessional behavior is simply unsustainable and unacceptable.”
The team’s only real immunity offer from Willis came April 4, and all previous discussions had been “very general, non-individualized” offers to offer potential immunity to undisclosed recipients,” Debrow wrote.
Each of the 11 people she and Pierson represented last summer were given information in August about the existence and potential implications of potential immunity offers.
All 11 of them declined the offer of possible immunity as presented at the time, Debrow wrote.
In addition, Debrow wrote, “none of the voters interviewed said anything in any of their interviews that was incriminating to themselves or anyone else, much less any other voter represented by counsel.”
During interviews with her clients last month, prosecutors never said they believed one of Debrow’s clients was accusing another and never said they objected to her representing all of her clients, Debrow wrote.
There was no reason to disqualify her from the case earlier and that’s even more true now that all of her clients have immunity, Debrow wrote.
Meanwhile, Trump’s Georgia legal team filed a motion in March to quash the special jury report and all evidence related to the panel’s investigation and to exclude Willis from any further involvement in the case.
Cathy Latham, who signed the bogus voter certificate, joined that motion on April 29. Latham was one of Debrow’s 10 representatives, but last week’s motion was filed by a different attorney.
McBurney has given Willis until May 15 to file a combined response to Trump and Latham’s motions.
Trump, who is seeking the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has denied wrongdoing and accused Willis, an elected Democrat, of targeting him for political gain.
The former Apprentice host became the first former US president to face criminal charges when New York prosecutors indicted him on March 30 for allegedly falsifying business records in connection with hush money payments to a porn star who claimed to have had an affair with him.
He faces other investigations, including a pair of U.S. Justice Department investigations into his handling of classified material after leaving the White House and his attempts to alter the 2020 election results.