Investigators in Georgia looking into possible crimes committed by former President Donald Trump are keeping a close eye on the Jan. 6 hearings in case there is testimony relevant to their case, sources told CNN.
Officials with the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office have previously met with staff members working with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack to identify any overlap between their investigations. Fulton County officials are investigating whether Trump committed any crimes in his efforts to overturn election results in Georgia, while the House panel is seeking to determine whether the former president’s efforts directly led to the Jan. 6 riot.
GIULIANI 2020 BALLOT SUITCASE THEORY WAS ‘FALSE,’ SAYS EX-TRUMP US ATTORNEY PAK
The House panel heard testimony from Byung Pak, a former federal prosecutor based in Atlanta, during its second hearing on Monday. The Trump-appointed U.S. attorney resigned one day after it was reported Trump had called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the votes needed to win the state.
Everyone was surprised he had stepped down, but sources familiar with the situation said he chose to quit before Trump could fire him.
After the election, then-Attorney General William Barr asked Pak if a video shared by Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, with a Senate subcommittee was legitimate. The video purportedly showed security footage of election workers in Atlanta sneaking ballots inside a suitcase to be scanned and counted. Giuliani also claimed that election workers conducted fraudulent counting practices.
Pak said the so-called suitcase was actually “an official lockbox where ballots were kept safe.”
The clip circulated by Giuliani, who characterized it as a smoking gun of fraud, was incomplete and out of context, Pak said.
Barr asked Pak about the claims because he was set to go to the White House for a meeting and predicted he’d be asked about it, Pak said. However, Pak said FBI officials interviewed election workers and found “nothing irregular happened in the counting, and the allegations made by Giuliani were false.”
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Georgia is one of a handful of states at the center of the House committee’s investigations because the state was key to Biden’s victory in 2020. Raffensperger is set to testify on June 21 after being subpoenaed by the committee.
That hearing is expected to focus on Trump’s efforts to pressure top election officials in different swing states to overthrow election results in his favor. Trump spent an hour on the phone on Jan. 2, 2021, with Raffensperger to “find” the number of votes needed to overcome Biden’s lead in the state even after the state conducted audits and hand recounts of the ballots to confirm Biden’s victory.
