One of our Forum peers pointed out in another thread that Federal Grand Juries indict 99.9% of the time, as if this fact supported the validity of this tool.
OK, and...?
It means that Mueller suspected some illegal activity. Given what we already know about Manafort and Flynn, and how an independent investigation was appointed on a bipartisan basis by Congress, that should not surprise anyone.
But people often confuse a Grand Jury with an impartial courtroom Jury.
Are we
really worried about those people?
There are no rules of evidence.
The Grand Jury can be shown (or demand to see) ANYTHING the Prosecutor can suggest might be of any interest for any reason at all.
So what?
The goal is to show the evidence to a grand jury, to see if it rises to the level of an indictment.
There is no "defense." No presumption of innocence.
So what?
This is no different than answering questions with an officer or prosecutor during an interrogation. In both an interrogation and a grand jury proceeding, you can invoke your 5th Amendment right not to answer questions that may incriminate you.
And again, the only purpose is to determine whether or not the evidence justifies an indictment.
It is all Prosecution and it doesn't take much for a Prosecutor to convince any Grand Jury which way to vote...since it only requires a "supermajority," not a unanimous vote absent the presumption of innocence.
...and the vote is only whether or not to indict.
You do understand that grand juries are not new, not rare, and are a right guaranteed by the 5th Amendment?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge fan of grand juries, and they definitely have their flaws. However, this is entirely normal behavior for someone in Mueller's position.
IMO that is the definition of a witch hunt. This is turning into just what I feared, when people demand an "independent investigation" of a politically motivated "suspicion." This is no longer a Russia Collusion investigation, it is now a "has he or anyone in his administration ever done something, anything," that could possibly be considered criminal (or at the very least unsavory) and therefore possible grounds for impeachment.
Uh, hello? Mueller is empowered to look for evidence of criminal activity. If Manafort was illegally laundering money for the Russian government via Ukrainian pro-Putin politicians, and in the process turns up a bunch of bribes by associates of Manafort, that's pretty normal for an investigation.
IMO empaneling a "Grand Jury" in this situation is a propaganda stunt designed to do exactly what many members of this Forum opposed to the results of the election have been crying for...implying the issue is so serious, so valid, so "grounded" in undiscovered truth that eventually the President will be shown to be as evilly "satanic" as any witch you have come to believe he must be and thus his demise is a certainty.
That is my concern about this whole effort.
First: Maybe your concern should be that members of the campaign engaged in illegal activities. In which case, even if it doesn't wind up with any impeachable offenses, is probably going to be serious. Why doesn't that possibility even cross your mind?
Second: Mueller did not come out and proclaim he had a grand jury. Rather, members of the press figured it out, by watching his activities, and seeing who started going to court.
Third: Oddly enough, many witch trials are deeply misunderstood. The prosecutors weren't running around looking for random individuals, and presuming guilt. In many respects, they weren't much different than the literalists who claim that Leviticus justifies anti-gay sentiment (Exodus 22:18 KJV reads "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live"). The concept of "mental illness" was hundreds of years in the future. The investigators and prosecutors even had standards of evidence, and tried to be diligent about determining the source of the behavior. (
Inside the Salem Witch Trials | The New Yorker)
