'Damning' Jan 6th committee testimony is a major blow to Trump's Georgia defense

The timing for Georgia prosecutors presenting evidence before a special grand jury could not be better, reports the Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery, because the recent Jan 6th Select Committee hearings have handed them a wealth of information that can be used to seek indictments against Donald Trump due to a quirk in the state's grand jury laws.

As the Beast report notes, while in most trials hear-say evidence can be excluded, Georgia's grand jury system allows it to be considered.

That is a problem for Trump with multiple members of his administration -- including his daughter Ivanka Trump -- having testified that he was well aware that he had lost the election, which wipes out his contention that he thought he had won -- a key part of his defense.

"Georgia is a state where prosecutors seeking an indictment can present hearsay evidence to grand juries. That means the special grand jury currently underway in Atlanta can be shown how former Attorney General Bill Barr and others repeatedly told Trump that his election conspiracy theories were absolute nonsense—laying the groundwork to prove that he knowingly cited false accusations of election fraud when he intimidated Georgia’s secretary of state on Jan. 2, 2021," Pagliery wrote. "According to a person familiar with the inner workings of the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, prosecutors from the start have closely examined whether Trump and his lieutenants could be charged with breaking a Georgia state law against 'criminal solicitation to commit election fraud.'"

RELATED: Georgia election investigation 'will send Donald Trump to jail': former Watergate prosecutor

The Daily Beast report adds that "in recent weeks, the Jan. 6 Committee’s half-dozen hearings have laid that to rest, playing video testimony from Trump advisers who recalled telling the commander-in-chief that the conspiracy theories were baseless,"

This is significant, writes the publication, because “an unsworn, out-of-court statement… can be sufficient evidence on which the return of an indictment can be based" in Georgia.

The report adds, "Barr and other top Trump administration officials were under oath when they testified before the Jan. 6 Committee in recent months, which could lend additional weight to their assertions that Trump should have known better when he repeated baseless election fraud claims to Georgia officials."

You can read more here.