Grand jurors will put in several hundreds of hours of work, right? How much are they compensated? How are they chosen? Besides the jurors themselves, who attends their sessions? Is there an art to steering a jury? Will Mueller send in a charismatic young’un or an old sober-looking sage? How many prosecutors in the room; what about Mueller himself? ("[H]e oversaw prosecutions [of] Noriega, [Lockerbie], Gambino crime boss John Gotti." Does the “oversaw”? suggest he does not have stellar courtroom presence?)
And, more interestingly, in what order will witnesses be called? Don Junior himself is primary witness in one of the TV-shown “conspiracies.” Will Prosecutor M. call DJT-Junior right away to get a quick perjury bust?
I hope not. The opponent team is kicking a lot of “own goals.” Let’s play the game out slowly. Go in hard and the Trump family would finally seek adult supervision.
Witness lists are kept secret, right? The witness can tell people he was called (and what he said?) but what about the grand jurors themselves? They’re sworn to secrecy for life? Is there a wiki that summarizes the difference between a petit and grand juror?
(Sorry if this all sounds like I’m stoned.)
I have no knowledge of the Mueller grand jury in particular, but in general, federal grand juries require sporadic service over long periods of time, and so they can be disproportionately weighted toward retired people, the unemployed, and people like government employees whose jobs accommodate such absences.
Here’s the relevant Wiki page. One quirk of grand juries is that while witnesses still have the right to invoke the 5th Amendment and have legal counsel their lawyer has to wait outside the room during questioning. There isn’t even a judge in the room; just the prosecutor, witness, & grand jurors (well, there’s a court reporter too). Also executive privilege doesn’t apply to grand jurys and sitting Presidents can be required to testify like anyone else (both Nixon & Clinton had to testify). Which means when (not if) Trump is called to testify it’ll be entirely on him to maintain self-control and follow his lawyer’s advice (which is almost certainly to be to invoke the 5th at every question).
That’s not an accurate statement.
In the context of a criminal trial or a grand jury convened to address a criminal investigation, the courts must use a balancing test to weigh the interests asserted by the administration against the “…demonstrated, specific need for evidence in a pending criminal trial.”
I certainly agree that in the current case, any claim of executive privilege as to the Don Jr Russia would fail that test. But that’s not at all the same as your claim above that executive privilege doesn’t apply to grand juries.