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At around 8 p.m. on Tuesday, a news bulletin popped up on my phone. A grand jury in the District of Columbia had refused U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s request to indict six Democratic members of Congress in connection with a video they had appeared in where they alerted military and intelligence community members that they had the duty to disobey illegal orders. The video had enraged President Donald Trump, who accused the lawmakers of sedition.
So much for the “West Wing” rerun I was watching with my husband. This was big news, and I knew who could explain just how big: John E. Jones III, current president of Dickinson College and a retired federal judge who’s really good at explaining legal issues in plain and compelling language.
Within 15 minutes, one of Jones’ crack staffers had responded to my email requesting an interview with him ASAP. And in today’s lead story, Jones points to how extraordinary the grand jury’s move was.
“I don’t recall a single instance, during the almost 20 years I served as a U.S. District judge, when a grand jury refused to return a true bill, an indictment. It just is completely aberrational,” he said in our interview.
And that, says Jones, is only one of many similar indications that the Trump administration is shredding its credibility with judges and grand juries.
“We’re seeing that time and again in appearances in court where judges simply don’t believe what U.S. attorneys are telling them, based on past demonstrable falsehoods that have been stated in open court,” he says. “And now we see grand juries that are also doubting the credibility of federal prosecutors.”
Click here to see a clip from the interview or read the edited transcript on our website.
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