The debate over the Trump grand jury forewoman's media blitz
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The Fulton County grand jury tasked with investigating former President Donald Trump's efforts to subvert Georga's 2020 election results has submitted its final recommendations to District Attorney Fani Willis, and forewoman Emily Kohrs wasted little time making the rounds to share what she could about her and her colleagues' work. And while Kohrs' interviews with major news outlets such as The New York Times, NBC, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution have indeed offered hints both cryptic and tantalizing as to whether Trump and his allies will face criminal charges and for what ("You're not going to be shocked. It's not rocket science," she told the Times) a growing chorus of pundits and legal observers have begun questioning whether Kohrs' expansive media blitz is causing more harm than good.
These interviews were wildly inappropriate
Kohrs' interviews are "an insult to the witnesses who have done their duty & come forward to get accountability," according to The View co-host and former Trump administration official Alyssa Farah Griffin, who described the forewoman's behavior as "unprofessional, unserious, and clearly biased."
"This person is coming off as someone seeking their 15 minutes of fame," quipped conservative legal commentator AG Hamilton, who framed Kohrs' NBC interview in particular as "insanely irresponsible." Other observers mused about Kohrs' conspicuously upbeat demeanor during her various media appearances, in which "she's clearly enjoying herself," prompting CNN's Anderson Cooper to admit he "was wincing just watching her eagerness to like, hint at stuff."
The hints could have potential legal ramifications
Already CBS News has reported that a number of attorneys for witnesses called by the Fulton County grand jury during their investigation have begun preparing to fight any forthcoming indictments based on Kohrs' being a "reckless idiot," as former Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Bromwich stressed on Twitter. Indeed, even before CBS' report, CNN Chief Legal Analyst Elie Honig predicted that "prosecutors are wincing" at Kohrs' "horrible idea" to publicly discuss her work with such apparent glibness. "She's potentially crossing a line here," Honig said. "It's gonna be a real problem for prosecutors."
The issue is not so much that Kohrs isn't allowed to speak about her time on the grand jury, legal analyst Bradley P. Moss noted (she's just barred from discussing the deliberations themselves) — It's that her comments could be construed as "tainting the trial jury pool" and giving Trump's attorneys further cause to move any potential criminal case "out of Fulton County." The interviews may even "carry legal risk for her," beyond providing "Trump and others with arguments to challenge the indictments," former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti predicted.
Her media blitz shows the investigation was tainted from the start
At least according to former President Trump. "You have an extremely energetic young woman, the (get this!) 'foreperson' of the Racist D.A.'s Special Grand Jury, going around and doing a Media Tour revealing, incredibly, the Grand Jury's inner workings & thoughts," Trump fumed on his Truth Social platform. "This is not JUSTICE, this is an illegal Kangaroo Court."
A few questionable interviews don't negate the jury's conclusions
"I don't think this is worth freaking out about," MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin stressed in a lengthy Twitter thread. While acknowledging that Kohrs' interviews were potentially bad optics, "given that GA special grand juries are investigative, not charging, bodies & that GA law, unlike federal law, favors public disclosure of grand jury proceedings," Rubin expected that any motions to quash forthcoming charges based on the media appearances would "likely fail."
Ultimately, Rubin concluded, Kohrs' willingness to admit she'd been starstruck by witnesses like Lindsey Graham and Rudy Giuliani "revealed she is no Democratic partisan hack."
Longtime Republican Trump critic George Conway, husband of former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, agreed on Twitter and in a separate panel interview with MSNBC, admitting that although the interviews likely weren't "helpful," they didn't change the basic facts of a case in which "the evidence is the evidence."
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