Georgia prosecutor seeks testimony from Michael Flynn and Newt Gingrich in election probe

The Georgia prosecutor main a legal investigation into doable election interference by then-President Donald Trump and his allies desires to listen to from former Home Speaker Newt Gingrich and Michael Flynn, Trump’s former nationwide safety adviser.

In court docket filings Friday, Fulton County district Lawyer Fani Willis stated Gingrich and Flynn each have “distinctive data” of the circumstances surrounding what she characterised as “multi-state, coordinated efforts to affect the outcomes of the November 2020 election in Georgia and elsewhere.”

Each Trump allies have been requested to look earlier than a grand jury, with a proposed date of Nov. 16 for Gingrich and Nov. 22 for Flynn.

Willis stated prosecutors wish to ask Gingrich about his alleged involvement in a plan to have GOP electors meet and forged Electoral School votes in Georgia and different states that President Joe Biden gained. Gingrich allegedly wrote an e mail to then-White Home chief of workers Mark Meadows and Trump White Home counsel Pat Cipollone asking in regards to the coordination of “contested electors” on December 14, 2020, Willis stated, citing a Home Jan. 6 committee letter final month to Gingrich calling on him to testify about emails he exchanged with former Trump senior advisers, together with Jared Kushner and Jason Miller. The panel stated that in line with emails it had obtained, Gingrich gave his enter about tv adverts that “repeated and relied upon false claims about fraud within the 2020 election.”

Willis can be searching for Gingrich’s testimony relating to the adverts, in line with Friday’s court docket filings.

In her petition searching for Flynn’s testimony, Willis cited an interview he gave to Newsmax in December 2020 through which she stated he proposed “that former President Trump ‘might order—throughout the swing states, if he wished to—he might take army capabilities, and he might place them in these states and mainly re-run an election in every of these states.’”

Prosecutors additionally wish to query Flynn a couple of December 2020 assembly he had on the White Home with Trump, legal professional Sidney Powell and others related to the Trump marketing campaign that, in line with the submitting, concerned discussions about appointing Powell as particular counsel to research the 2020 election, invoking martial legislation and seizing voting machines.

Flynn was subpoenaed by the Home Jan. 6 committee to testify about the identical Oval Workplace assembly. He exercised his Fifth Modification proper by declining to reply the committee’s questions throughout a closed-door assembly in March.

NBC Information has reached out to representatives of Flynn and Gingrich for remark.

The brand new requests for testimony come after the probe widened in August to incorporate members of Trump’s internal circle from his ultimate weeks in workplace, reminiscent of Meadows and Powell. In mid-August, Trump’s former private lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who was recognized as a “goal” of the probe, spent six hours on the Fulton County courthouse for testimony.

Prosecutors on Friday stated they’re additionally searching for testimony from Trump White Home Eric Herschmann, has additionally testified earlier than the Jan. 6 committee, relating to conversations he had with the previous president and his internal circle about their efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Willis additionally requested depositions from Jim Penrose, a former Nationwide Safety Company official who was working for Powell when an area elections workplace in Espresso County, Ga., was allegedly breached, and Stephen Cliffgard Lee, a chaplain from Illinois who coordinated with a Trump marketing campaign director to method Fulton County election employee Ruby Freeman at her house.