Editor’s Note: Jill Filipovic is a journalist based in New York and author of the book “OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind.” Follow her on Twitter. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely her own. View more opinion on CNN.

CNN
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It’s time for former President Donald Trump and his associates to face the consequences of creating and perpetuating the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. And it’s time for his supporters to re-enter the reality-based community and see the truth.

The findings of a Georgia special grand jury should put to rest any lingering questions about the validity of the 2020 election. The special grand jury was tasked with investigating whether there were “possible attempts to disrupt the lawful administration of the 2020 presidential elections in the State of Georgia.”

They found, unanimously, “that no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election.” And damningly, a majority of the grand jury said that they believe witnesses may have lied to them while under oath — and that the district attorney should issue indictments where appropriate.

The grand jury spent months hearing witness testimony and evaluating the evidence. And it’s worth noting that the public still does not know most of what is in their report, including who they believe should be indicted for perjury, the full list of who testified in front of the grand jury, and whether the grand jury recommended indictments for crimes beyond perjury. This means that the core findings of the special grand jury — whether Trump and his associates unlawfully interfered with the election in Georgia — are still hidden from the public.

That we’re even reading this much of the grand jury’s report is to the credit of the free press and their demands for accountability and transparency. After a legal back-and-forth over whether the grand jury report should be released to the public — and after the jurors themselves voted to recommend that the report be published — a Georgia judge ordered the publication of small sections of the report, including the introduction, conclusion, and a section related to possible witness perjury. The full report, though, remains confidential, with the judge citing due process and fairness.

This special grand jury does not have the power to issue indictments; they are an investigatory body, and it’s now up to the Fulton County district attorney to decide whether to present her case before a regular grand jury to decide if defendants should be indicted.

The information already in the public realm is damning. On Jan. 2, 2021, Trump spoke with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and told him to “find” the votes he needed to win. He also suggested that Raffensperger could face criminal penalties if he didn’t do Trump’s bidding. “The ballots are corrupt,” Trump told Raffensperger on their phone call. “And you’re going to find that they are — which is totally illegal, it is more illegal for you than it is for them because, you know what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. And that’s a big risk.”

He continued, “And you can’t let it happen and you are letting it happen. You know, I mean, I’m notifying you that you’re letting it happen. So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.”

Trump campaign officials and other allies also cooked up a seven-state scheme to create fake groups of Electoral College delegates who would circumvent the real election results and instead cast their votes for Trump.

This information is not new. And it would have been far better — for the sake of transparency — if the special grand jury report had been released in its entirety to the public. But even these limited public findings are important, as they make clear that an impartial group of average citizens in Georgia — long a red state, now an increasingly purple one — will take a look at the evidence before them and conclude, to a one, that Trump’s claim of a stolen election is a big, ugly, dangerous lie.

This conclusion seems unlikely to sway any of Trump’s hardcore base, who have proven themselves to be largely unswayable. But it could influence a Republican Party in turmoil, divided over everything from their anti-abortion strategy to who should lead their party’s ticket in 2024. Many Republicans want to move beyond Trump, with his unfiltered bigotry and never-ending drama and posse of hucksters and reprobates. But many of those same Republicans fear the stubborn and loud Trump base.

They should take a page from this special grand jury’s book. It seems highly unlikely that every member of this jury was a liberal Democrat. While Biden won 76.2% of the vote in Fulton County in 2020, there were surely Trump supporters and people who usually vote for Republicans among the jurors. And yet those voters were able to set aside their partisan interests, recognize the weight of the task they were assigned and the power they held, and behave accordingly. They gave the evidence a fair read; they made recommendations that were, hopefully, based on the information before them and not on partisan interests. They weren’t tasked with determining guilt or innocence, but rather with assessing whether the evidence before them supported bringing any criminal charges.

They were asked to assess whether it’s possible that a former president and his allies had leveraged an attack on American democracy, or whether that president was telling the truth when he said the election was stolen.

They found that, contrary to the former president’s claims, there was no evidence of widespread fraud undermining the results of the election, and that at least some criminal charges should be brought.

That’s a much nobler conclusion than the one we’ve seen from members of the GOP, many of whom have largely opposed any efforts to determine responsibility for election-fraud lies, and have instead often doubled down on those lies.

Even after the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol shocked the nation and left several dead, Republicans have mostly opposed efforts to determine what exactly happened and how.

If average people selected for a special grand jury can complete this task with honesty and integrity, surely it’s not asking too much for Republican officeholders to approach their roles with similar gravity: To declare that the election was free and fair, and to ask that those who may have broken the law or lied be held accountable.

Now, any criminal charges are in the hands of prosecutors. But the future of the Republican Party — its fealty to democracy, to the country, and to truth itself — is in the party’s own hands. They can move forward by telling the truth, seeking accountability, and trying to regain some integrity. Or they can move forward with the disgraced former President Trump.