Emily Kohrs, a 30-year-old retail worker from the Atlanta area, has been thrust into the national spotlight.
Well, Kohrs was thrust, but also seems to have stepped voluntarily, into the national spotlight.
Last year, Kohrs was named the forewoman on a special grand jury investigating one of the most prominent points of contention in modern American political/criminal history: former President Donald Trump’s alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
“The Kohrs-led jury listened to secret testimony for eight months last year and issued its finding and recommendations in a mostly secret report last week,” POLITICO reported. Fulton County District Attorney, Fani Willis, will now consider the grand jury’s report in deciding whether she believes criminal activity has occurred. If Willis decides a crime has been committed, she can impanel a new grand jury with the ability to level criminal charges.
Whatever Willis decides, Kohrs and her grand jury’s work has concluded. “With their work finished, Kohrs and her colleagues were instructed by the judge overseeing the case that, per Georgia law, they were permitted to talk to the media about their experience but not about their deliberations.”
Kohrs accepted invitations to speak with the media – and thus the plot thickened.
Did Kohrs cross the line?
Kohrs spoke with multiple outlets, including the Associated Press, Atlanta Journal Constitution, The New York Times, CNN, and NBC.
And whether Kohrs crossed that line, speaking not just about her experience on the grand jury but specifically about the grand jury’s deliberations, is now open for debate.
“She seemed to be complying, or at least attempting to comply, with the prohibition against revealing deliberations,” POLITICO reported. “But she also may have crossed the line. She revealed for instance, that the grand jury decided not to invite Trump to testify because it wasn’t worth the fight that he would put up.”
Predictably, Trump lashed out at Kohrs and the grand jury on Truth Social.
“This Georgia case is ridiculous, a strictly political continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt of all time” Trump wrote.
“Now you have an extremely energetic young woman, the (get this!) ‘foreperson’ of the Racist D.A.’s Special Grand Jury, going around and doing a Media Tour revealing, incredibly, the Grand Jury’s inner workings & thoughts. This is not JUSTICE, this is an illegal Kangaroo Court.”
Sidebar: last week when the grand jury released their report, Donald Trump wrote “Thank you to the Special Grand Jury in the Great State of Georgia for your Patriotism & Courage. Total exoneration.”
Donald Trump and the lawyers move in
Legal opinions on whether Kohrs crossed any legal red lines, are mixed.
Some argue that Kohrs just didn’t say very much aside from a few anecdotes and that “even the arguably deliberative material she disclosed was already widely assumed to be the case.”
Others feel differently, however; others feel Kohrs may have crossed the line, and “may have presented Trump and his allies with a real gift, both in terms of the raw politics of discrediting the investigation and also in terms of the legal options now available to challenge any indictments stemming from the special grand jury’s work.”
I’ve often pointed out: Trump always seems to wiggle out of trouble. Maybe Emily Kohrs is Trump’s loophole this time. I don’t know. We’ll see soon enough.
But in the meantime, take it easy on Emily Kohrs. She’s a private citizen who was put/stepped into a difficult situation.
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Harrison Kass is the Senior Editor at 19FortyFive. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.
