Yeah, she’s enjoying her fame. I understand it, but quotes like that will make the screams of “liberal bias!” even louder. I hope she’s ready for the inevitable death threats and phone calls.
I’m glad that it appears as though she’s on the side of the angels, but based on on that article she does come off as a bit flaky. Her attitude suggests that she wasn’t taking this all that seriously. Swearing in holding a TMNT popsicle stick? Also particularly her bringing in sketches she made of the witnesses. She was supposed to be paying attention to what they were saying not what they looked like. Note that I’m not saying that she or the rest of the grand jury didn’t take this seriously, but that that is the impression that is given by the article and what the Right wing is going to focus on.
Also her never having voted despite having a “a longtime interest in politics” does not endear her to me. Sort of like I have a long term interest in cooking but never turned on a stove.
As interesting as the forewoman’s comments are, I can’t help but think that they’re a bad idea. I don’t see how any good can come from it.
True. The odds of an amateur knowing what sort of comments will and won’t cause trouble are tiny. No comment is the safest comment.
I can understand her comments, perhaps. From what she has said to the reporters, she seems to be intelligent but under-educated. She says she is non-political, which seems to be supported by her non-existent voting record. I doubt many people have asked her opinion about anything her entire life. Now she is in the spotlight, has specific (secret) knowledge that lots of people want to know. That in itself makes her important.
She does seem to be anti-Trump, which seems to contradict her non-political stance. But, is it, really? She has been the foreperson of a Grand Jury that has been shown a considerable amount of testimony from various sources over the past 6 months. All of it coordinated by legal experts trying to show why Trump, et al., are guilty. If she had any political leaning when this began other than pro-Trump, it would be expected that she would exhibit anti-Trump sentiments at the end. Even is she considered herself to be to the right of center, if she was told to only consider the evidence shown and leave personal opinions aside, it wouldn’t be surprising for her to come to the same conclusion if she was trying to be honest.
I am not trying to provide Trump with any benefit of any doubt here, let me be clear. Only that you can’t really consider her comments to be evidence of prior bias. She seems biased now, obviously. That’s the point of the Grand Jury isn’t it, to determine if an unbiased jury would consider the evidence adequate to justify indictment? If she feels indictments are justified, that pretty much proves she now has a bias. Nothing more.
I expect that most people who have been on a jury and were shown overwhelming evidence that a person committed a serious crime will feel animosity towards a defendant.
Agreed. That’s no longer a “bias”. If she came in with an open mind, listened to the evidence carefully, and concluded that indictments were in order, that’s not bias.
If she turns out to be a Trumpette sabotaging the indictments it wouldn’t totally surprise me.
I don’t see any sabotage here.
She’s unsophisticated and uneducated, but she’s naturally clever and appears to have performed her duties as well as one could expect.
Ms. Kohrs is quite representative of a juror of your “peers.” She had never heard “the” phone call. She didn’t vote in the past 2 elections. She kept an open mind and drew her conclusions on the basis of the testimony and evidence.
Most important, she’s not on the grand jury with the power to indict, only the power to recommend. There is no prohibition to her speaking about her service.
She hasn’t disclosed much that will give DA Willis any trouble in the long run. Not that it will stop those who are indicted from trying to make hay out of it for awhile. I think it would have been better if she hadn’t succumbed to the temptation, but it could have been much worse.
I don’t think she is but I have seen opinion headlines suggesting she may be doing Trump a favor by tainting the potential jury pool. And you know Trump will be the first one to say that this completely exonerates him because if you can’t have a fair trial you’re innocent.
On an unrelated note, I have to say how absurd it is that Trump gets not one but two grand juries for a crime he committed publicly where we have a recording of him doing it.
There are actually good reasons for that. For one:
Convening the special grand jury allowed Willis to settle questions of privilege using only the supervising judge, Judge Robert McBurney, rather than enduring the endless appeals process available to people like Giuliani, Meadows, Graham and others who would not testify absent a subpoena and a judge’s ruling ordering them to do so.
IOW, it was an end run around a lengthy delaying tactic frequently employed by Trump. You may not realize it (you’d be far from alone), but this was the fastest way for Willis to pursue her indictments.
Which he did on Feb 16, six days ago.
He said all he did was make two perfect phone calls. Seriously, have any of us ever said we made a perfect phone call? Next thing he’ll be bragging about making a perfect poopoo in his potty chair.
In Fulton County, grand jury terms begin every two months. Some observers believe Willis has been waiting to present her case to a fresh panel because of legal rules that allow defendants to request speedy trials within two months of the end of the grand jury terms in which they are indicted.
The latest grand jury panels were sworn in during the first week of March. The next panels will begin the first week of May.
should an indictment happen it should happen in the next month or two.
Unless Willis is thrown out by the Georgia Republicans who are currently interfering with the independence of the judicial process.
it hasn’t been signed by the governor. if it is i’m betting on a court fight putting it on hold for a bit.
And that should be a slam dunk as well. But Republicans long ago threw away the playbook, and the constitution.
“The only winning move is not to play.” They took the wrong lesson from WarGames.
Something is happening in Georgia.
Fani Willis is asking a judge to disqualify a lawyer representing 10 of the fake electors in Georgia. The filing indicates that some of these fakes were meeting with Willis as recently as last week. And…
During these interviews, some of the electors stated that another elector represented by Ms. Debrow committed acts that are violations of Georgia law and that they were not party to these additional acts.
These people are flipping on each other so they probably shouldn’t have the same lawyer.
Here’s a pretty good Twitter thread from Anna Bower from Lawfare.
One more thing to note on this story. Apparently Willis offered immunity to the fake electors but that offer was communicated to Debrow, who did not pass it along to her clients.
I’m not a lawyer. Is that a big no no? Feels like it should be.