Brian Kemp resists Georgia grand jury subpoena

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp is resisting a grand jury subpoena
from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is
investigating criminal interference in Georgia’s 2020 election by
Donald Trump and his cronies. The question is why?


Indeed, we wouldn’t even have known that Kemp had been subpoenaed
for the closed-door hearing if wasn’t for the 121-page motion his
legal team filed with the Fulton County Superior Court. After
refusing to provide sworn testimony by video in July, Willis’
office emailed Kemp’s lawyer Brian McEvoy on August 9, compelling
Kemp to testify this past Thursday, August 18. However, his legal
team filed a motion to quash the subpoena, which raises some real
questions given that Willis had described Kemp as a “mere
witness”. What questions is Kemp trying to avoid answering under
oath? What’s he trying to hide?
TRANSCRIPT

Dennis Bernstein Greg, you are honed in like a laser beam in
Atlanta, and that lady there ain’t messing around — that is for
damn sure. The District Attorney there ain’t taken no junk from
no one. We’re gonna see some interesting things unfolding. Let’s
just start with the new developments around Trump’s attempt to
overturn the election…What does Brian Kemp’s name have to do with
this? Why is he suddenly in the middle?


Greg Palast Well, very big news, and he’s put himself in the
middle. Fani Willis is the District Attorney of Fulton County,
which is the big hunk of Atlanta, and she is investigating
whether Trump illegally tried to overturn the election in
Georgia. She hasn’t named him yet, or even subpoenaed him — named
him as a target — but she has named Lindsay Graham and others,
including Rudy Giuliani. Rudy Giuliani was forced to testify
yesterday before her grand jury.


Now, understand that the complaint against her, by Trump and Kemp
and everyone else, is that this is political, these subpoenas,
this whole investigation…And they keep saying, “Atlanta Democrat”
— that’s code word for Black. She’s a Black woman, but all of her
actions have been approved and ordered by Republican justices.


Now she’s subpoenaed Brian Kemp, this is interesting. Brian Kemp
is the Governor of Georgia, he’s running for reelection against
Stacey Abrams, and he’s also the star of my film Vigilantes:
George’s Vote Suppression Hitman. And so why is Kemp involved in
this? Because, here’s the interesting thing: Kemp was the guy who
did say he thought the election was probably correct. Understand
that Trump had called him several times, as well as the Secretary
of State, to say overturn the election, that is don’t call a
special session of the legislature and don’t certify the results.
In other words, don’t send anyone to the electoral college for
Georgia. Kemp said that’s against the Georgia constitution, I
have no authority to call a special session, I have no authority
to overturn and decertify this election.


You have to understand it’s not like Kemp doesn’t love Trump.
Trump endorsed him, they were hand in hand, cheek to cheek when
Kemp was running for governor against Stacey Abrams. They were
very close. Kemp was a massive supporter of Trump’s reelection in
Georgia. But, apparently, he wasn’t willing to go to prison for
Agent Orange. Now, the question is, what’s going on here with the
subpoena?


Bernstein Well, let’s, let’s talk about the subpoena, but first
just say a little bit more about who Fannie Willis is… She really
demonstrated when she dismissed Kemp’s attorney… Kemp’s attorney
was saying this is a political investigation, I’m not gonna show
up. She says, not only are you gonna show up, but I was gonna
give you a little extra privilege and let you come into the grand
jury room, but now you’re gonna sit outside. And she is an expert
on the RICO statute, so she is coming in through that organized
crime door — tough woman!


Palast Yes, tough woman. She’s very tough. In fact, a lot of
African American officials thinks that she’s way too tough, she
goes for the handcuffs right away, but no one doubts that she
knows exactly what she’s doing as a prosecutor. So, understand,
when you’re called before a grand jury, you don’t get the right
to a lawyer. If you’re the target, like Giuliani was, you can
keep taking the Fifth Amendment, and I imagine that he basically
did nothing but take the Fifth Amendment. ‘Cause Rudy blabs too
much, he would’ve told us all the wonderful things he said.


Bernstein Well, his attitude changed a little bit on the way in
there, ‘cause he knows who he’s going before.


Palast Well, remember, he was a federal prosecutor. He knows he’s
facing hard time breaking rocks on a chain gang in Georgia… He
saw HUD and those other those other films with Paul Newman, I
don’t think he’s looking forward to that, so I’m sure he took the
Fifth. But, again, I have to speculate ‘cause it is a secret
grand jury proceeding. In addition, like I said, you don’t get a
lawyer. But Kemp was claiming executive privilege as governor —
that’s kind of like monarchic privilege. I am too important as
governor of Georgia to answer questions about a crime in which
I’m a witness. And, as Fannie Willis, the prosecutor said to the
court, and said to his lawyer, he is merely a witness — what is
the problem here? Well, of course, it raises real questions.
Because she not only was gonna let his lawyer hold his hand, she
was gonna allow him to actually just do a remote hearing, go on a
kind of a closed Skype system the court has, give the grand jury
20 minutes, say what happened on the phone calls with Trump and,
you know, you’re on you way sir.


In fact, they never made it public. It was Brian Kemp who made it
public, that he was being called in. Now, who the heck is going
to announce that they’ve been called before a grand jury? But he
did. He made it public and then said, oh, she’s doing this
politically to harm me. Well, wait, she kept it completely
silent. The other thing is, she was gonna let him have a lawyer,
just come in by remote. No, no, no, he kept dragging his feet,
until now he’s in the middle of his campaign for reelection. He
says, she is forcing me to take time out of my campaign when it’s
at its “crescendo” — that’s the word that they used, the
crescendo of his campaign. Well, this is brand new. I’ve heard of
diplomatic immunity, I’ve heard of executive privilege, but I’ve
never heard of I’m-on-a-campaign privilege to be a witness in a
criminal case. I don’t think you and I could do that, Dennis. Oh,
I’m kind of busy, you know, we’ve got the Election Crimes
Bulletin tonight, sorry, we can’t show up in court. Yeah, I think
that the judge will have to hide his laughter. He’s gonna have to
turn around from laughing Kemp out of court.


But the question is why. Why in the world, when the guy had
basically a free ride – you can have your lawyer, you can
call it in. What’s the problem? And I think the problem is he
knows that if he has to talk… I think he also wanted to control…
He wanted to know all the questions in advance and control the
scope. They said you can’t do that. What are you talking about?
That cannot be done. You’re an officer of the court, she told
this lawyer, and you keep saying this is political, you’re gonna
end up… He’s gonna end up with sanctions, believe me, you don’t
play games like this with a grand jury. And what I think is going
on here is, and what I want to know as a journalist who’s been
hunting down Brian Kemp for 9 years — since he was the renegade
Secretary of State of Georgia, really America’s Vote Suppressor
in Chief with his really close friend Kris Kobach of Kansas
— is what was [said] on those calls with Trump? I suspect
that while the big public story that he said, nah, I’m not gonna
overturn the election, he was probably spending a lot of time
trying to figure out how he could actually in fact overturn the
election — that’s one. And the second thing is that he signed a
bill right after the election, a month after the January 6th
riot, he signed this bill SB 202, which basically sets up to give
him the power to do exactly what Trump wants.


I was just talking to Helen Butler. She’s considered Miss Vote in
Georgia. She’s head of the late Reverend Lowery’s organization
for voting rights [Georgia Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda].
She was also, because of her expertise in voting, on the Morgan
County board of elections. And the first thing Kemp did after
that law was passed was remove her. He’s removed 10 members of
local boards of elections. I asked her, what’s going on here, for
my film, I wanted to get it on camera. Why did Kemp remove you,
immediately, as soon as he had the power? She said, because Trump
called and said you have to de-certify the election. And the only
way to do that in Georgia… Kemp, can’t do it. Kemp has to get
local boards of election to not certify, refuse to certify their
county’s vote. So, if he can pressure boards of election to
de-certify in 2024, he can hand Trump what he wants in 2024. And
I think that there may have been some discussion about what
they’re gonna do in the future to change the law. I could see
Kemp — ‘cause I’ve followed him for a long time — telling Trump,
you know, Mr. President, well, I can’t do it now. It’s not in the
law, but I’m gonna make it the law. And then, when you run again
in 2024, I’ll make you president. I think that if he’s done that,
then he’s in real trouble, not only with his reelection.


Bernstein So he’s worried about going from witness to target. You
said that Graham was a target. He’s not a target, he’s just a
witness.


Palast Excuse me, he’s a witness. But I think that he’s really on
the unicycle going down that circus line to become named, and
I’ll tell you why. As we mentioned in the last Election Crimes
Bulletin, the real crime here is putting together a slate of fake
electors and mailing them to National Archives to hand over to
Congress, to hand over to the Vice President, Mr. Pence and say
these are the electors who were voted by the people of Georgia to
represent us at the electoral college. These are people who never
were on the ballot. They never ran for electoral college. You
can’t just take names out of the phone book who will swear that
they’ll vote for you for president and declare that they’ve been
made electors by the people of any state — that’s mail fraud.
It’s a crime. It’s racketeering, especially under Georgia law,
because it’s an easier case to make under Georgia law. Because
under Georgia law, you don’t have to have enterprise. This is a
little technical about racketeering law. To bring a racketeering
case, which I’ve done for the Justice Department, you have to
show usually a year’s long operation of an enterprise, like
you’re the mob. But in Georgia, you don’t, you can have one
instance. So, this one project of trying to jam through fake
electors, that itself, that combined operation, if it’s Giuliani
and the fake electors, Lindsay Graham and Trump, that’s
absolutely a slam-dunk racketeering case under Georgia law — I
can tell you that right now.


Bernstein Greg, you’ve been spending a lot of time in Georgia
doing this investigation. And, obviously, the landscape for this
is the fact that there are key elections in Georgia that could
change the history of this country.


Palast Oh, yeah.


Bernstein Could you talk about how this plays as a backdrop to
those elections? How does this interweave? What impact will this
DA investigation have on those crucial elections?


Palast Well, I think, if Kemp is outed as having tried to fix the
elections in Georgia, this is insulting to the people of Georgia.
You have to understand that Giuliani came down to Georgia and
said that the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, their G-Men, are a
joke now. Yes, they used to be like almost an arm of the Klan,
but they’ve been cleaned up and they’re run by real
professionals. And they did an investigation of Cobb County, the
absentee ballots and whether [they were tainted]. If you
remember, this whole game of “mules”, Black people stuffing the
ballot dropboxes. They went through every single ballot,
physically, and determined that not one was fraudulent out of
tens of thousands. And Giuliani said that was a joke. This is a
big problem in Georgia. Georgians are very proud of Georgia — you
have to understand that. And they’re not too crazy about some guy
with red stuff flowing down his face, this guy from New York,
telling Georgians that they are a joke. Okay. So you got Rudy
Giuliani telling people that they’re a joke.


This doesn’t help Kemp, you have to understand. So, he has to
protect Georgia from what is seen down there by many as an attack
on the integrity of Georgia. And don’t forget, when he said that
the race in Cobb County was fixed, it was controlled by
Republicans. So, Kemp is trying to play both ways against the
middle. He still cuddles up to Trump. He says Trump has a problem
with me, I don’t have a problem with Trump. After all, Kemp is
ultra right wing. He just signed a law, basically, outlawing
abortion in Georgia, because of the new Supreme Court ruling.
He’s ultra, ultra right. Very close with the evangelicals. So, on
one hand, he’s trying to sell himself, Kemp, as Trump’s buddy. On
the other hand, he’s trying to take some of those independents
who like the fact that he appeared to be standing up to Trump. He
wants it both ways. And if the truth comes out, it’s gonna fall
one way or the other. If he really did push back against Trump, I
think he would’ve already just done that 20 minute quiet
appearance before the grand jury. No one would’ve known about it,
because if he doesn’t make it public, Fani Willis was not gonna
make it public. He could have literally come in and out. So, why
this crazy he’s resistance? He’s afraid of what will come out,
because it’s amazing what happens, how your stories change when
you’re under oath, as opposed to under a TV camera. You can say
anything on a TV camera. Under oath, it’s what’s called a perjury
trap. If he starts prevaricating, they’ll be reading him his
rights. So, I think he knows that nothing he will say is gonna
get him any votes and could be a real, real problem if any of it
comes out.


Bernstein Wow, this is huge. I am interested… You called it from
the beginning. You’ve been saying that this is the prosecution
that could make all the trouble. And, obviously, a lot of people
are frightened and you’ve got a prosecutor who’s not messing
around, who’s got a special grand jury, but other things are
happening. [Trump Organization CFO] Alan Weisberg was convicted
on 15 felonies. They gave him five months, but he’s gotta say
something or he’ll die on Rikers Island. And believe me, I can
testify, having taught there five years, that ain’t no place to
die. I can’t imagine him surviving a couple of weeks there
anyway. Do you still think that this prosecution is gonna lead.


Palast Yes, well, Georgia’s central. I keep going back to
Georgia. Here I am in Los Angeles, every year for nine years I
end up in Georgia, ‘cause it’s always the center of the schemes
to bend elections. Brian Kemp is no hero. Somehow, he got played
as a hero just ‘cause he got in a fight with Donald Trump. We’re
so crazy about Trump that we make heroes of anyone who gets in a
fight with him. But, remember, he’s fighting him from the right.
So, be very careful about that. In addition, if Stacey Abrams
gets elected governor, this will be the first Black woman in
American history ever elected governor in Georgia — deep,
redneck Georgia. In addition, you have Reverend Raphael Warnock
running for reelection — he was elected in the special election a
year and a half ago, but to finish out a short term — and that’s
a very close race. I know that that the liberal coastal press
says, oh, he can’t lose to Herschel Walker, because there’s all
these ads that Herschel Walker put a gun to his ex-wife’s head,
all that type of stuff. Well, there’s a lot of gun owners in
Georgia who have done the same thing. I’m not sure that’s gonna
harm him. It’s not harming him in the polls. I mean, the fact
that he was a wife beater doesn’t overcome the fact that he was a
football hero. And this is Georgia, okay. He’s not a cricket
star, he is a football hero. That’s a very big thing. Whereas
Reverend Warnock is merely a minister, a man of God, not a man of
football, so it’s gonna be a tight race.


And if Kemp is in trouble, if he gets indicted or he runs into
other problems with the courts here, basically those races are up
for grabs. So, they’re central in terms of the races, but, again,
Fani Willis also has the advantage that she can tell a grand
jury, make a decision on whether Trump or any of these other
characters, Giuliani, et cetera, should be indicted. All she
needs, ultimately, is to get a final approval from a judge. She
does not have to ask the Justice Department, there’s no
politicians. You just saw all the hell that broke loose because
Merrick Garland personally approved the raid on Trump’s
Mar-a-Lago property. In the Justice Department, you can’t bring a
racketeering case without the personal approval of the Attorney
General, which makes it political. They even have policy papers
that indictments should be timed to avoid any influence on
elections. No such restrictions in Georgia. If Fani Willis has
the evidence, she’s got the indictments, and she’s clearly
circling in on Agent Orange.


Bernstein Right. And she’s not gonna be distracted. You’re
listening to the Election Crimes Bulletin on Flashpoints on
Pacifica Radio. Greg Palast is our co-host for this weekly
presentation. He is the fighter for your vote. He’s working on a
new film, Vigilantes: Georgia’s Vote Suppression Hitman.


Palast The “vigilante” refers to Brian Kemp and his new law,
which allows vigilante voter challenges. Anyone can challenge
anyone. And so far 88 Republicans have challenged over a quarter
million voters. By the way, not one Democrat has challenged one
voter.


Bernstein Well, let me come back to that grand jury, because the
other thing about it, we were talking about the fact that the DA
is an expert in dealing with in RICO statutes and stuff like
that.


Palast Yes.


Bernstein And it does seem like she’s going RICO, because the
amount of people that she’s interested in, that she’s planning to
subpoena, doesn’t that give us an indication that she’s going
big?


Palast Oh, absolutely. I think that she’s going where the
evidence is. You know, you can’t be submitting fake electors and
not expect the cops to show up at your door. You can’t say the
crime is too big to investigate. And she’s doing the right thing
by doing a very systematic, careful grand jury review, witness by
witness. Including, by the way, we haven’t mentioned the lesser
known character, but very important on the right wing, Cleta
Mitchell, who is an attorney who specializes in figuring out vote
suppression schemes. She was actually on the call with Donald
Trump to the state. And I wanna know if she was on the call with
Brian Kemp. Because Brian Kemp’s vote suppression tactics looked
like they were written by Cleta Mitchell and her organization,
the Bradley Foundation, and True the Vote, these ultra right
wing, basically anti-voter organizations. So, I don’t think we
can get away from the issue of vote suppression and the attempt
to overturn the election in Georgia. And I would like to see, I
was hoping at some point that Fani Willis will open up the
investigation even wider into the vote suppression tactics in
general.


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