Grand jury members don’t typically do media tours, and for good reason: They risk blowing up the criminal cases they’ve been working on.
That’s why a rogue juror in Georgia, who launched a bizarre media blitz this week right after wrapping up an investigation of former President Donald Trump’s activities in the 2020 election, has caused such an uproar.
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Emily Kohrs served as foreperson of a Trump-focused special purpose grand jury before emerging from seven months of near-total secrecy to tell multiple media outlets, including CNN and NBC, in a breathless, can-you-believe-it, laughy-jokey tone, that her panel had recommended criminal charges against over a dozen people, including famous names and “potentially” Trump.
She shared a lot more information that grand jurors normally keep secret, too, including her personal impressions of multiple witnesses. She said Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was a “geeky kind of funny.” She was so star-struck by Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani that she shook his hand. She swore a state official under oath while holding a Ninja Turtle popsicle she’d just picked up at an ice cream party thrown by the District Attorney’s office.
She said some witnesses were forthcoming, like White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson; and others clammed up, like Hutchinson’s onetime-boss, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
Being on the grand jury, she said, was “really cool.”
Trump’s lawyers pounced, arguing Kohrs “poisoned” the entire probe by going public.
“Our suspicions of a circus were proven to be true: We heard about ice cream parties; we heard about swearing people under oath holding Ninja Turtle popsicles,” Trump attorney Drew Findling told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “The public should know that whether you call this a special purpose grand jury or not, this is not the way that a grand jury is supposed to operate.”
Trump’s attorneys haven’t filed any motions related to Kohrs’ remarks yet. But they said they believe she went too far and that they’re considering all their options.
This controversy is unfolding at a key moment in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ investigation of Trump and his allies. Willis received a report in January from Kohrs’ special purpose grand jury, and announced that her charging decisions are “imminent.”
The DA’s office declined to comment on how on Kohrs comments might impact their next steps.
Loose lips
Kohrs created a headache and a public image problem for Willis, but hasn’t actually derailed the Trump case, according to several independent lawyers following the case.
“I don’t believe the Grand Juror’s statement really changed anything,” said Titus Nichols, a defense attorney in Georgia and former prosecutor in the Augusta District Attorney’s Office. “She didn’t state who they recommended be indicted, or for what particular offenses.”
Grand Jury deliberations are required to be kept secret. But the rules are looser in Georgia than they are in the federal system.
Judge Robert McBurney, who has overseen the special purpose grand jury’s work, did not forbid members of the panel from talking to the media. McBurney informed the grand jurors at the end of their probe that the word “deliberations” technically meant conversations grand jurors had among themselves, when there were no witnesses or prosecutors in the room.
Kohrs doesn’t seem to have technically broken those rules, Anthony Michael Kreis, an assistant professor of law at Georgia State University, told VICE News.
“This is an optical problem and not a substantive one,” Kreis said. “It seems to me as if most people are reacting because they are surprised that she can speak at all and are judging her demeanor on television.”
Kohrs comments create an opportunity for the defense to mount motions or file appeals, according to Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor—although he expressed skepticism that they’ll succeed.
“These efforts are likely going to fail, but this is still a distraction that will burden the Fulton County DA’s office,” Mariotti tweeted. “Even if the motions fail, I expect the foreperson’s comments to be used frequently by the defense, including at trial, to allege unfairness and bias.”
Some experienced former prosecutors were less sanguine.
“A blabbing grand jury threatens to upend the whole enterprise,” noted Barbara McQuade, the former top federal prosecutor in Detroit. “At some point, impropriety by a grand jury could be grounds for a claim of violation of the due process rights of the accused.”
Kohrs’ story about the ice cream party at the DA’s office, for example, could undermine her appearance of independence from the prosecutors’ office, McQuade noted.
“Why on Earth would grand jurors be socializing with the prosecutors?,” McQuade wrote. “A grand jury is an independent body, and prosecutors are trained to maintain a professional distance and avoid engaging in interactions that could be perceived as influencing their decisions.”
Trump’s attorneys show every sign of preparing to exploit the opportunity that’s been handed to them—either now, or in the future.
They argued Kohrs went too far when, for example, she explained why the special purpose grand jury decided not to subpoena Trump to testify. Kohrs has said the panel expected Trump would probably just plead the Fifth Amendment repeatedly, as he did when testifying in an investigation led by the New York Attorney General’s office last year.
“Not only did her comments go way too far, but they also touched upon the very thing that under Georgia law you are not allowed to talk about and that is deliberations,” Trump lawyer Jennifer Little told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Kohrs’ media tour ended as abruptly as it began. She spoke to the Associated Press, the New York Times, CNN, NBC News and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution over a period of about 48 hours. Then she went silent amid the controversy her remarks created.
On Tuesday, soon after her name was first revealed by the AP, Kohrs told VICE News she was too busy doing other interviews to immediately respond to questions.
After that, she stopped answering her phone.
