Georgia lawmakers want statewide grand juries to investigate election crimes

A Georgia Senate committee that spent the last two years investigating Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has proposed creating statewide grand juries to investigate election and voting crimes.

The Republican-led committee also has proposed new criteria for disciplining or removing district attorneys. And it’s proposed granting new authority to the state attorney general to prosecute a variety of crimes, potentially taking them out of the hands of locally elected DAs.

The bills follow years of Republican criticism of Willis’ prosecution of President Donald Trump and others for their roles in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Supporters say the legislation is needed to rein in the type of abuses they say Willis engaged in.

“The public does not want partisan prosecutions (from) one side or the other side,” said Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, chair of the Senate Special Committee on Investigations.

Willis’ office declined to comment. Senate Minority Leader Harold Jones II, D-Augusta, expressed concern that statewide grand juries for election cases also could also lead to abuses.

“A lot of times that can be abused, depending on who’s in power,” Jones said. “You have to be very careful with that.”

The Senate created Cowsert’s committee in 2024 to investigate Willis’ conduct of the election interference case. Willis charged Trump and 18 others with a variety of crimes in a sweeping racketeering case once thought to be the strongest of several criminal cases against Trump.

Willis’ prosecution got off to a quick start when four people pleaded guilty to various crimes. But the case hit the skids when defense attorneys accused Willis of having a conflict of interest because of her romance with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor she hired to help oversee the case.

That led to Willis’ disqualification and the eventual dismissal of the case.

The Senate committee’s work comes with an election year backdrop. Cowsert is running for attorney general, and several other members of the committee are seeking higher office. In December, Willis testified and blasted the proceedings as racially and politically motivated.

On Friday, the committee unveiled the legislative fruits of its investigation:

• Senate Resolution 875 is a proposed amendment to the Georgia Constitution that would authorize statewide grand juries to investigate election- and voting-related crimes. Cowsert said statewide juries would give Georgians more confidence that such cases are not politically motivated.
• Senate Bill 605 would create additional criteria for disciplining or removing elected district attorneys and solicitors general. The new criteria includes failure to exercise impartiality in prosecutions; failure to strictly comply with the State Bar of Georgia’s code of professional conduct; failure to comply with open records laws; and failure to comply with discovery procedures. Cowsert said the legislation would give the Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission the ability to discipline or remove prosecutors for violations.
• Senate Bill 604 would grant the attorney general concurrent jurisdiction for violent crimes, illegal immigration offenses and fentanyl offenses. Cowsert said that would allow local prosecutors to seek assistance if they lack the resources to prosecute complicated crimes. He said it would also allow the attorney general to step in if local prosecutors fail to prosecute high-profile crimes.

At Friday’s committee meeting, local prosecutors expressed misgivings about the legislation.

District Attorney Joe Mulholland of the South Georgia Circuit said making a “reasonable effort” to fulfill requests for public records, for example, could be a bigger burden on prosecutors in rural areas than on those in metropolitan areas who have larger staffs. And he said a liberal attorney general could prosecute police for alleged misconduct in his conservative district when local prosecutors didn’t support charges.

Attorney General Chris Carr also weighed in on the legislation. In a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he said he’s “proud to partner with DAs to bring down large-scale criminal networks, but also to enforce the law when prosecutors refuse to do so.

“If the legislature is going to give the Attorney General’s Office statewide grand jury authority, they shouldn’t stop at elections cases — they should do so for human trafficking, gang activity, domestic terrorism, organized retail crime and public corruption as well,” Carr said.

Cowsert’s committee is expected to vote on the bills next week.