To the Lawyers

Serious query:

Trump is on record via Tweet regarding Andrew McCabe:

Trump Twitter Archive

Sean Spicer stated that Trump Tweets were official statements from the WH.

Rumor has McCabe being indicted; do the Tweets have any bearing as far as prejudicing the proceedings or whatever the legalese is?

This presupposes that the matter goes to trial.

If it went to trial, I'd assume the defense attorney would want the judge to ask a number of questions probing the jurors' feelings about Trump, the amount of attention they pay to things he says/tweets, and the like.

In some instances, you can get a new venue for trial if you can convince the judge that something so greatly affected the population the venire (a set of potential jurors from which those eventually seated is drawn) is drawn from that a fair trial isn't possible, but that's hard. And I don't see how that works with tweets, which are arguably worldwide. It's not like they can try to have the trial moved to Kazahkstan, where Trump is not likely a big subject....

Rexedgar said:

Serious query:

Trump is on record via Tweet regarding Andrew McCabe:

Trump Twitter Archive

Sean Spicer stated that Trump Tweets were official statements from the WH.

Rumor has McCabe being indicted; do the Tweets have any bearing as far as prejudicing the proceedings or whatever the legalese is?

This presupposes that the matter goes to trial.

Click to expand...

Actually, I'll expand on it. I'd try to have it moved to a state that only just barely went one way or the other, or perhaps one where current polling is close to 50/50. Hard to say since polling doesn't mean much unless you're only asking people who actually vote with some regularity.

Would it get granted? I have no idea. Depends what they can show about the influence of tweets, and it would be a convoluted process to construct an argument about that that wasn't mainly speculative.

Mr Person said:

Actually, I'll expand on it. I'd try to have it moved to a state that only just barely went one way or the other, or perhaps one where current polling is close to 50/50. Hard to say since polling doesn't mean much unless you're only asking people who actually vote with some regularity.

Would it get granted? I have no idea. Depends what they can show about the influence of tweets, and it would be a convoluted process to construct an argument about that that wasn't mainly speculative.

Click to expand...

What happens if the court cannot find a jury that has heard biased information?

Rexedgar said:

What happens if the court cannot find a jury that has heard biased information?

Click to expand...

To be clear (or make it muddier), I've been mixing and matching. One was questions of changing the venue of a trial, the other being about individually biased jurors. They are related but different.

Juror bias: during jury selection the judge must find each juror who sits to be impartial. There are always a set of general questions asked to the venire - the potential jurors sitting in the courtroom - and people raise their juror numbers if they have an affirmative response. They will also have filled out a questionnaire. Then, depending on the jurisdiction, the judge may question them individually at side bar or the attorneys might get to also ask their own questions. Again, depends. The judge determines whether the juror is impartial (and they almost always are found impartial if they say they can be, without hesitation/hedging it). If the judge says impartial, that juror sits, and the verdict will not be reversed unless the finding is ludicrous. As in, a judge finding that a drug unit detective is impartial in a drug case is impartial; something crazy.


Venue: This is more about the risk that the entire pool of potential jurors that might be selected being so high that even if they believe themselves to be impartial, the risk cannot be taken that they are seated. Picture a 1,000-person town. A beloved community-oriented and public family is horribly murdered. You want that case out of there because no matter who sits on that jury, they are going to have a bias no matter how hard they fight it. I haven't actually have not had to research this ever so I hesitate to be more specific. The simplest answer is that if the judge can't find the risk of bias is so great as whatever applicable test says it must be, then the judge denies the motion to change venue and you have your trial in the jurisdiction in which you were charged.

My last post could have used some more editing...

90% of people have no clue what Trump tweets or who McCabe is.

Interesting how so many Democrats are so radically demanding free speech rights be eliminated that many rant that the President has no free speech rights.

Rexedgar said:

Serious query:

Trump is on record via Tweet regarding Andrew McCabe:

Trump Twitter Archive

Sean Spicer stated that Trump Tweets were official statements from the WH.

Rumor has McCabe being indicted; do the Tweets have any bearing as far as prejudicing the proceedings or whatever the legalese is?

This presupposes that the matter goes to trial.

Click to expand...

And it looks like they'll likely to be doing what I pondered once charges are filed, assuming they can get a GJ to indict...




In recent months, McCabe’s attorneys shared with federal prosecutors and top Justice Department officials a point-by-point rebuttal of what they view as flaws in a possible criminal case against McCabe. They argued that prosecuting McCabe would be unprecedented, politically driven and contrary to the very legal thinking that Attorney General William P. Barr outlined when he decided President Trump should not be charged with obstruction of justice in the special counsel investigation, according to an analysis provided to The Washington Post by McCabe’s team, the substance of which was communicated to the Justice Department.

McCabe’s attorneys threatened to mount a no-holds-barred defense, arguing that the case should be thrown out because of Trump’s frequent personal attacks and raising the prospect that they would demand information that might show investigators were influenced by political bias. McCabe’s team was told Wednesday that Deputy Attorney Jeffrey A. Rosen had rejected one of their last attempts to get the Justice Department to abandon the case. The team had been told last month that prosecutors had recommended moving forward and Jessie Liu, the U.S. attorney for the District, had endorsed their recommendation. But as of Monday morning, no charges had been filed, and there was no sign of the grand jury that had been hearing evidence in the matter previously. That panel was suddenly called back to the D.C. federal courthouse last week after a months-long hiatus — which seemed to be an indication that it would soon be asked to consider approving an indictment.

[cont.]

https://beta.washingtonpost.com/nat...cfbf6c-d88d-11e9-bfb1-849887369476_story.html


If they're already using that angle now to try to avoid the whole thing, I can see them using the same basic argument before a judge: a fair trial is not possible thanks to Trump poisoning the jury pool.