Judging Freedom - Special grand jury in Trump election interference in GA

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

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Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, May 3rd, 2022. It's about 11 o'clock in the morning on the East Coast of the United States. And this morning in Atlanta, Georgia, a special grand jury will meet for the first time in order to begin hearing testimony and evaluating evidence in a potential criminal case against former President Donald Trump. Wow, how many of these are there? Last week, a grand jury in the city of New York expired without indicting him, so that investigation is probably over. The prosecutors in New York could convene another grand jury, but that's a very inefficient and wasteful thing for them to do,

since they had a grand jury impaneled for nine months and did not even ask it for an indictment. This is another grand jury and another issue. The issue in New York was whether or not the president, before he was president, committed tax fraud, insurance fraud, or bank fraud by lying to taxing authorities, an insurance company, and a bank about the value of his assets. This issue in Atlanta, Georgia, is whether or not the president was engaged in a conspiracy to obstruct justice by his efforts to get officials in the state of Georgia to change their minds on the outcome of the presidential election in 2020. Much of what the president said is already on tape, and that'll be played for the grand jury as well. So this grand jury, which doesn't indict, it only recommends. So the systems are different in each state. This special grand jury will hear all this evidence. Whatever the prosecutors have, they have

hundreds of witnesses and many pages of documents and a lot of tapes. And then the grand jury will vote whether or not they think Donald Trump committed at least one felony by his efforts to change the outcome of the votes in Georgia in November and December of 2020. If they vote yes, then all of their evidence will be sent to a regular grand jury, which has the power to indict, and that grand jury will review everything and decide whether or not to indict. It's a head-scratcher as to why they go through two grand juries. It's the only state in the union that I know of that does this. The federal system doesn't do it. All my years in this world in New Jersey, New Jersey doesn't do it.

New York doesn't do it, but Georgia does. Often criminal procedure is a product of history. You know, it's worked well. Why bother changing it? That's the attitude rather than conformity. Well, everybody else does it this worked well, why bother changing it? That's the attitude, rather than conformity. Well, everybody else does it this way, maybe we should as well. So we'll see where it goes. Grand jury's meeting secret. I would imagine that if this grand jury votes that there is enough evidence to convict, that will be leaked between the time the grand jury votes it and the time the

grand jury that has the authority to indict receives it and comes to its own conclusion. So this is the beginning of a long journey and again it's a grand jury. Trump's not there, his lawyers are not there, the prosecutors are not obliged to give the grand jury any what we call exculpatory information, information that undermines their own case or helps the defendant. They can give the grand jury what they want to give the grand jury and they can shape its thinking. That's the system. Justin Politano for Judging Freedom.