CNN host Anderson Cooper and legal analyst Elie Honig raised concerns on Tuesday about a spate of media appearances by the foreperson of the grand jury that investigated former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.
The foreperson, Emily Kohrs, has been interviewed by several news outlets, including CNN, about the grand jury’s deliberations, offering coy and cryptic hints about who might be indicted.
“It’s not a short list,” she said on CNN earlier Tuesday, giggling, of the list of recommended indictments. Asked if Trump was among them, she said: “I really don’t want to share something that the judge made a conscious decision not to share,” but “it was a process where we heard his name a lot.”
“Why this person is talking on TV, I do not understand,” Cooper said, according to a clip recorded by Mediaite. “She’s clearly enjoying herself. Is this responsible? She was the foreperson of this grand jury.”
Honig, a former state and federal prosecutor, said that the interviews were a “horrible idea” and that prosecutors were probably wincing watching them, adding that it was “painful” to see Kohrs dropping hints.
“This is a very serious prospect here,” he said. “Indicting any person, you’re talking about potentially taking away that person’s liberty. We’re talking about potentially [indicting] a former president for the first time in this nation’s history. She does not seem to be taking that very seriously.”
Honig, a former assistant U.S. attorney, suggested that Kohrs’ comments could pave the way for Trump’s team to make a motion, should he be indicted, to dismiss the indictment based on grand jury impropriety.
“She’s not supposed to be talking about anything really, but she’s really not supposed to be talking about the deliberations,” he said, describing Kohrs as “a prosecutor’s nightmare.”
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney allowed certain sections of the grand jury’s report to be made public last week but withheld the names of any people it may have recommended for indictment, citing due process concerns. The panel of 23 jurors reviewed evidence for seven months starting last May. Now it’s up to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to decide whether to prosecute.