A judge in Georgia is expected on Friday to release the final report of a special grand jury that spent much of last year investigating whether former President Donald J. Trump and his allies criminally interfered in the 2020 presidential election in the state.
Mr. Trump and 18 of his allies were indicted last month in a sprawling racketeering case charging them with conspiring to overturn his narrow election loss in Georgia. All 19 defendants have pleaded not guilty.
The special grand jury, which Fulton County prosecutors convened to help with the investigation, met at an Atlanta courthouse from June to December 2022 and heard testimony from 75 witnesses.
Under Georgia law, the panel could not issue indictments. But it was charged with writing a report with recommendations on whether indictments were warranted in the investigation, which is being led by Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney. Portions of the report were publicly released in February, but they did not indicate who had been recommended for indictment, or for what charges.
Mr. Trump is facing four separate criminal cases, a staggering legal burden for a politician running for another term. The Georgia case is the one that lays out the broadest set of accusations against him: 13 felony counts including racketeering, making false statements, and pressing public officials to violate their oaths of office.
It remains unclear when the former president will face trial, and in what court system, since he and his co-defendants have varying legal strategies. Some have filed to move the case to federal court, while others are seeking speedy state trials. Judge Scott McAfee of Fulton County Superior Court will allow any proceedings in his court to be televised, which would not be the case in a federal trial.
Among those charged in the 41-count indictment, the culmination of a two-and-a-half-year investigation in Fulton County, are Mr. Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and a number of lawyers, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell.
As of Sept. 5, all 19 defendants had pleaded not guilty and had waived their right to a formal arraignment.
This is the second of the four criminal cases facing Mr. Trump to be centered on his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Even so, he is far ahead of his rivals in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and is running neck and neck with President Biden in a potential rematch, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll conducted in late July.
Here is what we know about the investigation in Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta.
Why was Donald Trump investigated in Georgia?
Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, began looking into whether Mr. Trump and his associates had violated Georgia law shortly after a recording was released of Mr. Trump talking by phone on Jan. 2, 2021, to Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state. During the call, Mr. Trump insisted that he had won the election in Georgia, and made baseless allegations of fraud there, even though several recounts confirmed that he had lost in the state.
Mr. Trump told Mr. Raffensperger that he wanted to “find” 11,780 more votes in the state — one more than he would need to win Georgia and its Electoral College votes.
Over time, court documents and other public records revealed that Ms. Willis, a Democrat, was also investigating false statements that lawyers for Mr. Trump made in state legislative hearings; a meeting of 16 pro-Trump Republicans who cast bogus Electoral College votes for him; an intimidation campaign against a pair of Fulton County election workers who had been falsely accused of fraud; and a successful effort by Trump allies to copy sensitive software at an elections office in rural Coffee County, Ga.
What laws may have been broken?
The indictment lays out a variety of charges, including soliciting a violation of oath by a public officer, false statements and writings, impersonating a public officer, forgery, and conspiracy to commit computer theft.
All 19 of the indicted defendants face a charge under the state’s racketeering law, which is often used to prosecute members of an “enterprise” that has engaged in a pattern of criminal activity.
The federal racketeering law is best known for being used against members of the mafia. But both federal and state racketeering laws have been used more widely than that. Prosecutors often turn to racketeering laws to ensure that leaders of a criminal enterprise, and not just the foot soldiers, are held accountable. Potential sentences can be steep: Violating the Georgia racketeering law, by itself, may be punishable by a five-to-20-year sentence.
Who else is charged?
The Georgia investigation appears to be the most expansive legal response so far to the efforts that Mr. Trump and his advisers and other associates undertook to try to keep him in power after he lost the 2020 election.
When Mr. Giuliani, a former mayor of New York City, was acting as a Trump lawyer, he made numerous false claims at Georgia legislative hearings about voter fraud; like Mr. Trump, he faces 13 counts in the indictment.
Also indicted is David Shafer, the former chair of the Georgia Republican Party, who oversaw the meeting of the bogus electors in December 2020. More than half of the electors have been cooperating with Ms. Willis’s office.
Other lawyers who tried to keep Mr. Trump in power — including Mr. Eastman, Ms. Powell, Ms. Ellis and Mr. Chesebro — are charged with racketeering and other counts. So was Mr. Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, who was ordered to testify last year before a special grand jury that aided in the investigation.
The Justice Department blocked an effort to seek the testimony of Jeffrey Clark, a former high-ranking lawyer in the department who sought to intervene in Georgia on Mr. Trump’s behalf after the 2020 election. He was also charged in the Georgia indictment.
A number of people whose names have been mentioned in connection with the investigation have said that they did nothing illegal, including Mr. Trump, who has described his call to Mr. Raffensperger as “absolutely perfect.”
How does the Georgia inquiry relate to other investigations of Mr. Trump?
Ms. Willis has said that she has not coordinated with Jack Smith, the special counsel in two federal investigations of Mr. Trump that have resulted in indictments. But Ms. Willis’s team did make use of the voluminous documents and testimony about election interference efforts amassed by Congress’s Jan. 6 committee.
One of the two federal cases is related to the former president’s handling of classified documents; the other to his efforts to reverse his defeat in the 2020 election.
An indictment in New York State is related to what prosecutors described as a hush-money scheme to cover up a potential sex scandal and clear Mr. Trump’s path to the presidency in 2016.
Mr. Trump has pleaded not guilty in all of the cases.
What comes next?
Several defendants in the Georgia case, including Mr. Meadows, have filed to move it to federal court. Judge Steve C. Jones of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia is expected to rule on those motions soon.
Mr. Trump’s legal troubles in other venues and the large number of defendants in the Georgia case make setting a trial date complicated; pretrial matters like jury selection and the requests for venue changes could take months.
Initially, Ms. Willis asked for a trial to start in early March. But two defendants, Mr. Chesebro and Ms. Powell, promptly filed motions seeking speedy trials, to which defendants are entitled under Georgia law. Judge McAfee set the start of their trial for Oct. 23.
. Other defendants, including Mr. Trump, are seeking to sever their cases from those of the defendants seeking fast trials. Judge McAfee still has to sort through all these competing motions, as well as a motion from Ms. Willis to keep all of the defendants together in a single trial.
All of this could be complicated further if Mr. Meadows or other defendants succeed in their efforts to move the case to federal court, by arguing that they were acting in their capacity as federal officials. Ms. Willis opposes these removal efforts.
Emily Cochrane contributed reporting.