Chris Carr, the current state attorney general of Georgia, has been subpoenaed as part of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s ongoing criminal investigation into efforts by now former President Donald Trump and allies of his to undercut Joe Biden’s election victory in the state.
Carr — like fellow Republican officials in Georgia including Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — was the recipient of a pressuring phone call from the then-president tied to the 2020 presidential election and its aftermath. On the call with Carr, Trump pushed the official “not to rally other Republican officials” in opposition to the infamous post-election lawsuit from Texas seeking the invalidation of Biden’s wins in four states, as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. That case was filed directly with the U.S. Supreme Court, which rejected it. Carr eventually formally pushed back on the Texas-led case in a filing with the Supreme Court.
Besides the court’s refusal to go along with the anti-democratic right-wing arguments which Carr opposed, Texas state Attorney General Ken Paxton and one of his top deputies — both of whom are Republicans — are facing litigation over their involvement in the case. A lawsuit against Brent Webster, current First Assistant Attorney General, said (referencing the case) his “allegations were not supported by any charge, indictment, judicial finding and/or credible or admissible evidence, and failed to disclose to the Court that some of his representations and allegations had already been adjudicated and/or dismissed in a court of law.” That lawsuit is from the Texas state bar’s Commission for Lawyer Discipline, and the same phrasing is apparently used in a separate case from the commission against Paxton.
States targeted by the post-election litigation “were required to expend time, money, and resources to respond to the misrepresentations and false statements contained in these pleadings and injunction requests even though they had previously certified their presidential electors based on the election results prior to the filing of Respondent’s pleading,” the commission noted in its case targeting Paxton. Consequences for Webster and Paxton over their conduct could apparently range from a formal reprimand to disbarment.
As for the Georgia investigation, Raffensperger and five other people tied to his office have also been subpoenaed — and Raffensperger already indicated he’d comply with a subpoena. On a call with Raffensperger, Trump pushed him to “find” enough votes to flip the state, something that would have required criminal meddling with the results because of the lack of real-world evidence of systematic fraud or widespread missing votes. Raffensperger resisted the pushes from Trump and those around him for Biden’s win to essentially be undone.
Willis’s investigation is wide-ranging; other targets include the scheme to assemble faked electoral votes for Trump, although those involved in that effort don’t appear to be the potential subject of criminal charges from Willis according to publicly available information. But, she’s apparently heard from David Shafer, the current state chair of the Georgia GOP who was part of the scheme and has also spoken about it to the House committee investigating the Capitol riot.
