The Guilani - Eastman image caption reaches an NYTimes story about an action not by the Georgia Attorney General. The prosecutor in question is not the AG, but the Fulton County DA, Fani T. Willis.
This is not a distinction without a difference. There is a jurisdictional dimension, one of reach outside of county boundaries, as NYTimes explains:
The inquiry focused on five things that happened in Georgia in the weeks after the election. They include calls that Mr. Trump made to pressure local officials, including a Jan. 2, 2021, call to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, during which Mr. Trump said he wanted to “find” nearly 12,000 votes, or enough to reverse his loss.
Ms. Willis’s office also scrutinized a plan by Trump allies to create a slate of bogus electors for Mr. Trump in Georgia, even though Mr. Biden’s victory had been certified several times by the state’s Republican leadership. The office also investigated harassment of local election workers by Trump supporters, as well as lies about ballot fraud that were advanced by Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer at the time, and other allies during legislative hearings after the election.
At times the investigation stretched beyond Fulton County, including to rural Coffee County, about 200 miles southeast of Atlanta, where Trump allies and contractors working on their behalf breached the election system in the first week of 2021.
Ms. Willis has said that by bringing charges under Georgia’s version of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, her inquiry could cover a wide range of issues. Broadly speaking, so-called RICO laws require prosecutors to prove that a group of people conspired to take part in organized criminal activity.
With RICO indictments, Ms. Willis said in an interview last year, “there are sometimes acts that occurred outside of the jurisdiction that are overt acts that we can use if they are evidence of the greater scheme.”
The special grand jury heard evidence in the case for roughly seven months and recommended more than a dozen people for indictments, its forewoman has said. The Trump aides and allies whose conduct has been scrutinized in the inquiry include Mr. Giuliani, who was told last year that he was a target who could face charges. A number of other lawyers who worked to keep Mr. Trump in power have also been under scrutiny in the investigation, including John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and Kenneth Chesebro.
Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, was ordered to testify before the special grand jury last year. He traveled to Georgia after the election and became personally involved in the efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office despite his loss.
Ms. Willis’s office also sought the testimony of Jeffrey Clark, a former high-ranking official at the Justice Department, but was blocked by the department. Mr. Clark sought to intervene in Georgia on Mr. Trump’s behalf after the 2020 election, over the strong objections of more senior officials at the department.
More than half of the 16 Republicans who were bogus Trump electors in Georgia are cooperating with Ms. Willis’s office, but others have been told they could face charges, including David Shafer, the former leader of the state Republican Party.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers have called the Atlanta inquiry a “clown show” and have filed numerous court motions seeking to disqualify the district attorney and derail the investigation. They argued that the special grand jury proceedings were unconstitutional, and that Ms. Willis has made prejudicial public statements.
But Georgia judges have shown no inclination to act before any charges are brought. Both the presiding Fulton Superior Court judge, Robert C.I. McBurney, and the Georgia Supreme Court have rejected motions from the Trump team in recent weeks.
That might be telling readers more than they care to know, but the crux of a county DA having a long reach is via RICO jurisdiction. Readers finding that a new term are urged to research it, but basically a RICO conspiracy touching a county may have actors outside of the county, which matters. Rudy and Eastman being poster children that way. Bogus elector slate members living elsewhere than in Fulton County likewise are touched by claims of conspiracy and, presumably beyond general notions of conspiracy crime reaching out geographiclly, one expects the specific Georgia RICO statute has express language helping ground a wide jurisdictional reach.
Sorry about the ambiguity. But it matters.
UPDATE:
DWT, source of the Rudy & Eastland image used in the sidebar, has a good discussion about the Jack Smith federal indictment - that which was filed in DC, not the Florida one over classified documents.
It also is worth quoting the initial two paragraphs of the Aug. 8 NYTimes item previously quoted - for a time frame:
The fourth criminal case involving Donald J. Trump is likely to come to a head next week, with the district attorney in Atlanta expected to take the findings from her election interference investigation to a grand jury.
The Georgia investigation may be the most expansive legal challenge yet to the efforts that Mr. Trump and his advisers undertook to keep him in power after he lost the 2020 election. Nearly 20 people are known to have been told that they could face charges as a result of the investigation, which Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., has pursued for two and a half years.
It is a lot of litigation aimed at Trump. He earned it. And there is a goes-around, comes-around sense to things from the way Roy Cohn and Trump misused litigation as a weapon against others. To intimidate. Tasting their own medicine.
Polling indicates Trump enjoys a commanding lead over DeSantis and others, with Pompeo about the only possible candidate who has not yet declared. Marco seems content with 2028, being young enough, and Cruz has a Senate seat to defend.