Local journalist testifies before Fulton special grand jury

Journalist George Chidi came to the Georgia State Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, over concerns about extremists trying to interrupt the certification of Georgia’s 2020 Electoral College presidential electors for Joe Biden.

“I had been watching the Capitol for a few weeks before Dec. 14,” he told WABE. “There were groups of white supremacists and white nationalists who had been agitating on the Capitol steps, where the open discussion had broken out about disrupting the Electoral College vote. And I have been tracking extremist activity in Georgia for years. I thought something might happen. So I went to the Capitol expecting craziness.”

Chidi says he then “saw one of the electors, the Republican electors, walk into a room and somebody I knew and I realized that if he was there then the others might be there and they might be trying to pull something. So I pulled out my phone and went Facebook Live, walked in and asked what was going on. And they saw one look at me and saw that I had a phone recording and somebody said ‘he’s got a phone going,’ and they booted me out. But I managed to ask a question first. You’re having a meeting what kind of meeting and somebody blurts out, it’s an education meeting.”