The Law Goes Medieval on Us

Understanding Grand Juries and Secret Proceedings

According to John Solomon of Just The News (great site), there are currently at least four Grand Juries going on right now related to the Biden Lawfare Regime of Terror. This is wonderful news if it’s true, and I suspect it is. Solomon is a good source.

Grand Juries are mysterious and seem a bit alien to the modern American mind. First of all, they’re secret. It’s why it’s a big scoop for Solomon to even know that four Grand Juries are going on right now and what broadly they are looking at.

Grand Juries do not allow the accused person to attend or participate in any way; there is no provision made for defense. In fact, there can be a Grand Jury convened in a case against you and you might not even know it.

In the end, all a Grand Jury can do is to vote to say that there is sufficient evidence to bring the matter to trial (called “a true bill”) or they can demur in which case they issue a “no true bill.” Curiously, the Latin phrase used for no true bill is “ignoramus.” What that means is the Grand Jury is saying the charges can be ignored.

What Do Grand Juries Even Do?

What they don’t do is call Defendants, allow the Defendant or representatives of the Defendant to attend the proceedings, allow cross examination of witnesses, or make their findings public. So what do they do? They look into matters to see if formal legal charges should be filed. Grand Juries can call witnesses and subpoena documents. Ordinary citizens can be called to testify before a Grand Jury, but they swear you to secrecy.

The Defendant, who may not even be aware of the Grand Jury has no right tointerfere in any way.

All this sounds Medieval because it is. Grand Juries come to us from Medieval times in Great Britain. Pretty much the United States and Great Britain are the only two nations on earth that have Grand Juries if you don’t count Liberia. Technically, Liberia has Grand Juries but it rarely uses them. The United States uses Grand Juries a lot, particularly in Washington, D.C.

The overarching premise of a Grand Jury is to protect the Defendant against baseless or unfair prosecution. This would include lawfare the way the Biden regime practiced it. The irony here is that we are now using Grand Juries to determine if the lawfare unleashed against Trump during the Biden regime is something that can or should be prosecuted criminally. Irony is the law’s wise-acre cousin.

A Grand Jury is convened in secret. Grand Juries meet in secret. I’m not sure they don’t even have a special secret handshake. Anyone who is eligible for jury duty can get called to serve on a Grand Jury, which sometimes meets for months.

As stated earlier, the accused person is not notified about the Grand Jury. In high-profile cases like this stuff about Biden lawfare, sometimes word leaks out. It is doubtful anyone has any meaningful details. I would assume there are a lot of nervous Democrats in Washington right now wondering, "Is it me? Is this grand jury about me?" They don’t know, and chances are they won’t be able to find out. Are they convening over Adam Schiff? Letitia James? Biden election fraud? Hillary Clinton? Oh, no, is it about Barack?

Actually, we could have one Grand Jury doing all of those guys and Maxine Waters on top of it. We just don’t know what those Grand Juries are up to.

Charges?

Grand Juries take their sweet time. They may meet for a few months. They survey the accusation in one of two forms, either they have an indictment (naming the accused, the alleged crime, dates and details) or they consider “presentment” which is a written statement but more spontaneous. A Grand Jury might meet to consider: Can we indict Eric Swalwell for treason? Then witnesses and evidence would be gathered and Eric Swalwell would not be informed, nor would he be permitted to attend. If the Grand Jury thinks that there is enough evidence to proceed to trial, they indict him.

A Grand Jury is free to go wherever the evidence or their own ideas lead them. For instance, they may investigate Ilhan Omar for immigration fraud but if, in so doing, they turn up some information that suggests she played a role in the BLM riots of 2020 in Minneapolis, they could add that to the charges by presentment. And if in digging through that evidence they find she was stuffing ballot boxes in Minneapolis in the 2016 election, they can consider that as a potential charge. And, if in so doing, they find out that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC) made illegal donations to Ilhan Omar’s campaign, they can charge AOC. In other words, the Grand Jury may meet for one thing and then decide that charges are appropriate for six other things.

They’re scary, but it’s how our system works. The idea is that formal indictments in criminal court should not be filed frivolously but should have some substance to them.

Ham Sandwich?

A Grand Jury is sort of like a Las Vegas buffet. You may go there thinking you want the prime rib, but you sit down with that plus fried shrimp, a stuffed pork chop, baked salmon, and some chicken wings. In other words, no one is stopping you from taking more on than was originally intended. Grand Juries do the same.

Grand Juries may have up to 23 jurors, which makes them much larger than conventional juries in criminal cases. The rules are that at least 12 of the jurors must agree to file a true bill. Since a Grand Jury can have almost two dozen jurors, only half need to agree. And agreement does not mean the jury thinks the defendant is guilty; all it means is they think there is enough meat on the bone to proceed to criminal court.

The old saying about indicting a ham sandwich is almost true. With no ability to offer a defense and only needing one out of every two people to vote to indict, it’s not hard to get an indictment. A Grand Jury can always just raise its hands in the air and say, “It’s up the criminal court now.”

The Unindicted Co-Conspirator

Grand Juries are where we get the phrase “unindicted co-conspirator.” This is where a Grand Jury says some other person was likely involved in the nefarious activities, but they’re not indicting them. During Watergate, President Nixon was named as a “secret, unindicted co-conspirator,” except it wasn’t that much of a secret.

Grand Juries are sort of going the way of the flip phone. They’re still used, but they’re falling more and more out of favor routine matters. Only about half of all states in America ever convene Grand Juries regularly (although all can). And if a case looks pretty solid, there is no reason to go to the Grand Jury unless it’s very high profile.

And if you’re an unindicted co-conspirator that label sticks like Super Glue even though you never had a chance to offer a defense and your case won’t proceed to a criminal court where you might get exonerated.

Not Very Appealing

Unlike defendants in other courts, a defendant can’t appeal a Grand Jury finding. If the Grand Jury indicts you, too bad, you’re indicted.

But all a Grand Jury can do is kick the case to a “real” court and then the local prosecutor has to decide if he or she is going to prosecute. Since Grand Juries are mainly called in big deal cases, chances are if you get indicted after the Grand Jury closes, you’re going to court. As a matter of fact, Grand Jury indictments lead to prosecution in about 99% of cases but not all of those prosecutions turn out to be guilty verdicts. And most never go to trial, since in about 90% of cases, the Defendant ends up making a plea deal.

Any Defendant brave enough to go to criminal court gets to play by a new set of rules. In a criminal court, the Defendant can be present, offer a defense, cross-examine witnesses, and enjoys certain protections such as the provision that guilt be established “beyond a reasonable doubt.” In other words, a Grand Jury can indict you, but it’s not necessarily a slam-dunk to get you convicted in a court of law. That’s a whole order of magnitude more in difficulty. On the other hand, the Grand Jury means that the prosecutor in your case arrives in court with wheelbarrows full of evidence and testimony.

So why are Grand Juries secret? The secrecy is meant to protect the accused since if the charges are bogus or weak, the reputation of the accused person is protected. No one knows an accusation was even made. Banning Defendants from the proceedings allows witnesses to speak freely without having to worry about the opposing attorney objecting.

We don’t know what the Grand Juries are hashing out right now with respect to lawfare, but here are some ideas from Solomon himself.

• Some prominent political figures were mentioned. I can’t say their names, but their initials were Clinton, Biden, Obama

• One topic mentioned is the misuse of government resources to sway election results

• One could possibly be about a whistleblower who names Adam Schiff as a leaker of classified information with the goal to inflict harm on Trump’s administration

• But then again, maybe the Grand Jury are about assaults on police officers and ICE, including the Subway Sandwich guy

• Other cases involving leaks of classified information

Classified Information

In case you wonder whether leaking information is a crime, it all hinges on the word “classified.” If you overhear something, read somebody’s notes from a meeting, or see somebody’s text messages, you can disclose that stuff. That may in some cases be tacky and indicate a lack of discretion on your part, but you’re not going to go to prison.

When information is classified, it is because it is believed that the unauthorized release and distribution of such information could damage national security. It’s not about whether it hurts someone’s feelings or ruins a surprise—it is a danger to the nation. Remember all the kerfuffle over classified documents in Biden’s garage? Or at Mar-A-Lago? Those are paper documents, but you can get in just as much trouble if you know the contents of a secret document but go blabbing it to a newspaper or media outlet. You can read somebody’s personal letters and share that stuff, but if you read a classified document, you can’t disclose that content.

(In America, journalists almost never get in trouble for publishing classified information, but the leaker can go to prison.)

Billions of documents in the United States are classified. Some of these classifications are outdated now, but rarely does anybody go back and declassify them—although that is possible. For instance, I think we’re safe to disclose our plans for D-Day. Some documents in the federal government relating to the Kennedy assassination are still classified. It would probably help our system if we were as robust about declassifying stuff as classifying it in the first place.

The President can declassify anything he wants whenever he wants and there is no procedure for this other than he announce it to whoever is nearby or to nobody. That’s why charging Trump with storing classified documents at his home is a different matter than Biden storing classified documents in his garage. Trump was president at the time he took the documents, so he was entitled to have them and within his power to declassify them. Biden took classified documents while he was Vice President under Obama and (a) he had no right to take those documents, (b) the proper term for what he did with those documents is called “theft,” and (c) Biden had no power to declassify the documents. Funny, but the mainstream media gives Old Joe a pass and makes it seem like Donald Trump was Julius Rosenberg.

The three levels of classification are “Confidential,” “Secret,” and “Top Secret” with the last one capable of causing “exceptional grave damage to national security.” People who have “clearance” get clearance for one or more specific levels. Some people have clearance to see “Confidential” and “Secret” stuff, but not “Top Secret” materials. And it’s a big club. About 1.25M people in America have “top secret clearance.”

Even if you have the proper clearance, you still don’t get to rifle through documents willy-nilly. Besides clearance, one must also have a “need to know” the information. Precautions are taken so that the material is protected as the authorized users are reviewing it. They are usually brought into a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF) and observed; they are not allowed to bring in a cell phone or any recording devices. They also get a 312 form and sign a document agreeing not to disclose what they have seen. The 312 forms provides a record of who has seen classified information and when they saw it.

Leaking classified information is kind of a big deal. The Trump White House (2016-2020) leaked like a sieve due to the numerous people there eager to hurt Trump. Even now leaks still occur. And during the Biden era, some secret information leaked out as well.

You may remember when someone at the Supreme Court leaked the decision on the Dobbs case that would upend Roe v. Wade. What leaked was a preview of Justice Alito’s official opinion. Well, it was called a leak, but it is in a different category, because such court documents are not actually classified. They’re usually just considered confidential but fall outside the national security classification system. Since they generally don’t really have much to do with national defense or international affairs, they’re not considered “top secret” stuff and under most circumstances, people won’t read a Supreme Court opinion if you handed it to them, much less one that they weren’t supposed to see. So while the Dobbs leaker prompted a fruitless internal investigation, it wasn’t the same crime as others have committed when leaking truly classified materials.

A Grand Jury can be convened to determine if a person should be indicted for leaking classified information and that Grand Jury may agree conclude that criminal charges can be filed against a leaker. The leaking of certain types of classified information can be charged under the Espionage Act. It’s a very serious offense and it is why tempers run hot on the case of Julian Assange. Was he just liberating information? Improving transparency? Exposing government wrongdoing? Or was he trying to bring down the country?

But even if the Espionage Act isn’t invoked, leaking can still be punished with a prison term. This is why it’s so perplexing that leakers outside the Beltway, like Chelsea Manning, get slapped into prison for leaking but Congressional insiders leak constantly with no consequences. Oh well, if you want justice, best not look for it in Washington, D.C. It left town long ago.

When these Grand Juries that John Solomon tells us about reach their determinations, it likely will not be announced in some grandiose public way. What is most likely to happen is that some “sealed indictments” will be issued and then, bam! Arrests.

Let’s hope for justice.