Washington (AFP) - A special grand jury in Georgia investigating efforts to overturn the 2020 election recommended bringing charges against more people than were ultimately indicted, including a powerful US senator and two ex-senators, according to a report unsealed Friday.
Nineteen people, including former US president Donald Trump, have been charged by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in connection with the case, but no charges were brought against the current senator and the former senators.
The special grand jury recommended indicting Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina who is a close Trump ally, and former Republican senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue of Georgia.
It also recommended that charges be brought against Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn and three former Trump attorneys, Lin Wood, Cleta Mitchell and Boris Epshteyn.
Graham, Loeffler and Perdue were ultimately not charged by Willis, the district attorney who had the final word on whether or not charges should be filed. Willis also declined to indict Flynn, Wood, Mitchell and Epshteyn.
The special grand jury heard testimony from 75 witnesses between June and December of last year and its conclusions were released by a judge on Friday.
The special grand jury voted to bring charges against a total of 39 people but the actual indictments stemmed from an investigation by a separate grand jury in Georgia.
That jury indicted Trump and 18 other people three weeks ago on racketeering and other charges for their attempts to overturn Democrat Joe Biden's election victory in Georgia.
The 77-year-old Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has pleaded not guilty to the allegations that he led a criminal conspiracy to overturn his 2020 election loss in the southern state.
'Find 11,780 votes'
Trump lost to Biden by less than 12,000 votes in Georgia.
In a telephone call to Georgia election officials, Trump was recorded asking them to "find 11,780 votes" -- the exact number he would need to overturn Biden's victory there.
Graham, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has acknowledged contacting Georgia election officials in the wake of the November 2020 vote but said he did nothing illegal.
Asked by reporters on Friday about the special grand jury recommendation that he also be charged, Graham said: "I was totally surprised.
"I never suggested anybody set aside the election," he said. "I never said go find votes.
"If it ever becomes impossible or politically dangerous or legally dangerous for a United States senator to call up people to find out how the election was run, God help us all," Graham added.
Trump denounced the grand jury report in a post on his Truth Social platform, calling it "election interference."
"It has ZERO credibility and badly taints Fani Willis and this whole political Witch Hunt," he said. "Essentially, they wanted to indict anybody who happened to be breathing at the time."
Two of Trump's co-defendants in the Georgia case -- attorneys Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell -- are scheduled to go on trial on October 23.
A trial date has not been set yet for Trump and the other defendants.
They include Trump's White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who served as Trump's personal lawyer when he was in the White House and vigorously pushed the false claims that Trump had won the 2020 election.
Trump is also scheduled to go on trial in Washington in March on charges of conspiring to defraud the American people with his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.
