A new court filing reveals that Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis subpoenaed Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) last month to appear before a special grand jury in the Fulton County investigation into former President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the battleground state.
Attached to the new filing is Hice’s subpoena, which instructs him to appear before the grand jury on this coming Tuesday morning. Hice’s request, filed on Monday morning in Fulton County Superior Court, says the GOP congressman seeks to move the proceedings from state court to federal court because he is a member of Congress.
The grand jury’s probe led by Willis focuses on the former president’s efforts to subvert the election results in Georgia, particularly Trump’s infamous phone call to Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger in which he urged the Georgia official to “find” enough votes to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state.
Hice was among a group of Trump allies who pushed the Big Lie of a stolen election and voted to overturn the election results hours after the deadly Capitol insurrection. Witnesses testified to the Jan. 6 Select Committee that Hice attended a Dec. 21, 2020 meeting at the White House with other members of the House Freedom Caucus as they planned to challenge the election results on the day of the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6.
Hice also launched a bid for Georgia secretary of state this year and was endorsed by Trump. Hice, however, lost to incumbent Raffensperger, who has faced backlash and threats after refusing to cave to Trump’s demands.
Earlier this month, the same grand jury subpoenaed Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and several members of Trump’s legal team that sought to keep the former president in office after losing the 2020 election. Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, along with John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis and Cleta Mitchell, were all subpoenaed.
The grand jury is requesting testimony from Trump’s legal team partly due to Willis’ interest in the legal teams’ alleged involvement in the creation of a so-called “alternate” slate of electors for the state. The fake electors scheme involved a group of pro-Trump electors who signed certificates falsely stating that they were electors from the state, despite Biden’s victory in Georgia. The broader fake electors scheme is also of interest to the investigators on the Jan. 6 Select Committee and the DOJ.
