Grand jury subpoenas U.S. lawmaker in Georgia election probe

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Georgia grand jury has subpoenaed U.S. Representative Jody Hice as Fulton County continues its criminal investigation into alleged wrongdoing over former President Donald Trump’s attempts to sway the state’s 2020 election results, documents showed.

The special grand jury in Fulton County called on Hice, a Georgia Republican, to appear on Tuesday, according to court and congressional documents first reported on by Politico and the Associated Press earlier on Monday.

Representatives for Fulton County did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Hice's office. The lawmaker notified Congress about the request on Friday and is seeking to have the matter transferred to federal court, filings showed.

The Georgia probe is one of the most serious cases facing Trump, who was recorded in a Jan. 2 phone call pressuring a top state official to "find" enough votes to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden in the state.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing and blasted the probe as politically motivated. He has argued that he lost the 2020 election because of widespread voter fraud - an allegation that has been rejected in multiple court decisions, a number of Republican audits and by the Department of Justice.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is leading the probe for the state's most populous county, has also warned some Republicans that they could face indictments for their role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, Yahoo News reported.

The Department of Justice has separately been investigating an alleged plan by Trump and his supporters to overturn the election.

A U.S. House of Representatives committee investigating Trump supporters' Jan. 6, 2021, deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol has also focused on Trump's actions in Georgia.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey in Washington; Additional reporting by Moira Warburton and Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis)