Judge's 'Extraordinarily Rare' Grand Jury Review a 'Real Red Light' for Trump DOJ in Don Lemon Case, Ex-Prosecutor Says
Key Takeaways
- •The judge wants to review the full grand jury minutes to assess whether the jurors were given all necessary information.
- •Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig described the court’s order as extraordinarily rare.
- •Honig said the move may indicate the judge is seriously considering dismissing the case.
- •Don Lemon was arrested in January while covering a protest inside Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.
- •Grand jury proceedings are secret and non-adversarial, which makes pretrial judicial review of their minutes uncommon.
A federal judge in Minnesota has taken a step one former federal prosecutor calls "extraordinarily rare," ordering prosecutors from President Donald Trump's Department of Justice to produce the complete minutes of grand jury proceedings in the case against journalist Don Lemon.
The judge told DOJ prosecutors that she wants to review all of the grand jury minutes to determine whether the grand jurors were given all of the correct information. Lemon, a veteran television journalist and former CNN anchor, was arrested in January while covering a protest that took place inside Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor, told Jake Tapper on CNN's "The Lead" that the judge's order was "extraordinarily rare" and said it should serve as a warning sign for federal prosecutors because it indicates she is giving "serious consideration to dismissing the case."
"Two things to know about the grand jury. One, it's a one-sided process. The only people in the room are the prosecutor, witnesses, grand jurors, and a transcriber," Honig said. "And, two, judges almost never agree to look at the minutes before a trial happens. So, we don't know exactly what the alleged infirmity here is, but 99 times out of 100, judges are going to say, 'The grand jury is not my business.'"
"The fact that the judge is saying, 'I'm going to take a look at those' is a real red light to me," he continued. "And the judge has noted this Justice Department has been found to have violated grand jury procedures in other cases, including in Illinois against anti-ICE protesters. So there's a bit of history here as well."
Under the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, federal felony charges are generally brought through a grand jury indictment. Grand jury proceedings are conducted in secret, are not adversarial, and defense attorneys are not permitted to be present, which is why judicial review of grand jury minutes before trial is so uncommon. In cases where a judge does order that kind of review, it can become an important procedural checkpoint because it gives the court a chance to assess whether the indictment process followed the rules before the case moves further ahead.
Source: Raw Story
