Brian Kemp: From witness to unindicted co-conspirator?

It seems a mystery. Why is Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia
playing hide and seek with the Atlanta grand jury investigating
whether Trump and associates attempted to tamper with the 2020
election results?


Why is the Governor resisting the subpoena? After all, the
national press has played Kemp as some kind of hero for allegedly
standing up to Trump, refusing to overturn Georgia’s majority for
Joe Biden.


But Kemp is no hero. The reality: Kemp and his elections chief
played games with Georgia’s voting process — for Trump and
for their own political careers. They only refused Trump’s
post-election demands they knew would have put them at risk of
hard time on a chain gang.


Kemp’s resistance to testifying seems all the more odd because
Fulton County (Atlanta) District Attorney Fani Willis has bent
over backwards to accommodate the skittish pol. Because he was
moaning about the time taken away from campaigning against Stacey
Abrams, she agreed he could appear by video. And, surprisingly,
Willis was going to let his attorney sit with him, something a
grand jury witness is almost never permitted.


Kemp has gone crying to a judge pleading he shouldn’t have to
answer questions about calls made to him by Trump and cronies.
Kemp claims “sovereign immunity” — the right of kings not to
answer questions, reserved in the US for official state actions.
He claims “executive privilege” as if being CEO of Georgia is
grounds to conceal evidence of a crime. He claims it would take
time from his campaign — that’s one I’ve never heard in
court. If that succeeds, we’ll have even more crooks run for
office.


It’s always dangerous to speculate on what’s going on in Brian
Kemp’s brain, but let me suggest that he knows his benign status
as mere “witness” may quickly change to something far more
serious.


If Trump, as reported, demanded the Governor call a special
session of the legislature to de-certify Joe Biden’s victory, and
Kemp told him to go fly, then Kemp’s off the hook. So, why not
tell that to the grand jury?


Kemp reportedly told Trump that, as Governor, Kemp could not
de-certify the presidential vote. Then was it Kemp who suggested
Trump make those calls to the man who did have the power to
reject the vote count?


Question: Governor, did you suggest that Trump call the Secretary
of State?   Question: Governor, did you suggest to Mr. Trump
that, while Georgia law does not allow you to interfere, you
intended to change the law?   Question: Governor, you have
yet to turn over all notes and information about the Trump
de-certification campaign.  What happened to those records?


How could Kemp answer? Take the Fifth? Not wise for a
sitting governor. Does he fudge it with, “I don’t recall”? Bad
idea: Strategic forgetfulness is an indictable offence.


The most dangerous question would be whether Trump told him
about, or asked for help with, sending a slate of fake Georgia
“electors” to the Electoral College. That’s the highly technical
core of the DA’s potential racketeering case against Giuliani and
friends: submitting names of Electors who were never elected, who
never even appeared on the ballot. Some Trump Electors, the
official ones who ran on the November ballot, refused to have
their names sent to Congress — so the Trump gang just
manufactured a phony Elector list.


If Trump mentioned the scheme to create a fake set of Electors,
and Kemp “forgot” to tell the DA, we could imagine Kemp listed as
an unindicted co-conspirator. Not a winning campaign slogan:
“Re-elect Kemp: Named but unindicted!”


 


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