excalibur
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- Mar 19, 2015
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And as mentioned in the article, this belongs in Florida. While the DoJ would prefer DC where 90+% vote Democrat.
The answer, as with most grand-jury questions is, we don’t know.
Grand-jury proceedings are secret. The Trump special counsel, Jack Smith, is not talking (which is as it should be), so most of what we are learning comes from lawyers for witnesses who’ve been subpoenaed — and from former president Donald Trump, who seems to have running commentary about the probe (and the prosecutor) on his Truth Social platform.
I am an Occam’s Razor kinda guy. In that vein, I’d say convenience is the simplest explanation for why Smith is suddenly presenting witnesses before a grand jury in Palm Beach, Fla., when he and the Justice Department had been using one in Washington, D.C.
Smith is apparently questioning a number of witnesses who are based in Florida. It would be a hassle for many (or all) of these people to travel to Washington to provide what is probably, in most instances, fairly brief testimony. Prosecutors — like most people whose work involves getting cooperation from others — grasp that the harder you make things, the less cooperation you get (at least when you’re dealing with people who are just witnesses, rather than people who may have criminal exposure and are seeking leniency). If Smith is trying to bring the Mar-a-Lago investigation to a conclusion in the near term, it has to be easier for him and his staff to travel to Florida and interview a bunch of witnesses than to make a bunch of witnesses travel to D.C., where they’d have to miss work, find accommodations, and wait around.
To be sure, the need to obtain evidence and testimony from Florida underscores that this is a case that should be in Florida. The subject of the investigation is at Mar-a-Lago. The relevant documents were stored at Mar-a-Lago. The major June 2022 meeting, at which Trump’s lawyers allegedly misled the government about whether he had surrendered all the documents in his possession that bore classification markings, was at Mar-a-Lago. The FBI search was at Mar-a-Lago.
But of course, the Justice Department (whose National Security Division was running the investigation for months before Smith was appointed) wants the case to be centered in Washington, not Florida. In Washington, the jury pool is heavily anti-Trump. In Washington, all grand-jury matters were certain to be litigated before (now former) chief district judge Beryl Howell, a Democrat who spent years working for sharp-elbowed partisan Pat Leahy on the Senate Judiciary Committee and then was appointed to the court by President Obama. (Not surprisingly, it was Howell who ruled that Trump’s lawyer Evan Corcoran had to testify and provide his notes of conversations with Trump to the special counsel, reasoning that they were not protected by the attorney-client privilege because of the crime-fraud exception.)
As a result, the government set up shop in Washington. Because relevant government agencies, such as the National Archives and Records Administration, are in Washington, and because the grand jury that Smith is likely to accuse Trump of obstructing is in Washington, there is an adequate basis to conduct the prosecution there. (Under federal law, venue for an indictment is proper in any district where part of the alleged crime was committed.)
Nevertheless, the real action in the Mar-a-Lago case was, as you’d reckon, in Florida. But that’s not where the Biden Justice Department wants to plant its flag. Florida is a red state where Trump lives, where the jury pool is apt to be more sympathetic to him, and where — as we saw when Trump’s motion for the appointment of a special counsel, though legally meritless, was granted by Trump-appointed district judge Aileen Cannon (at least until her order was reversed by the Eleventh Circuit) — the court may not be as favorable to the Justice Department in matters Trump as have been Judge Howell and most of the D.C. court (whose judges are handling hundreds of Capitol riot prosecutions).
I am assuming that Smith is using the Florida grand jury because it makes things easier in terms of interviewing witnesses and gathering other relevant evidence. But there are other theories out there.
Some are speculating, for example, that perhaps Smith may be planning to bring charges in both Washington and Florida. There may, after all, be some crimes for which venue would not lie in Washington. Let’s say, for example, that Smith believed he could prove Trump unlawfully disseminated national-defense intelligence in Florida, or had such intelligence documents moved from one unauthorized location in Florida to another unauthorized location in Florida. These acts would be substantive crimes that occurred only in Florida (even though they would also be evidence that he obstructed the grand jury in Washington).
I do not buy this “Florida-only crimes” as a rationale for using two grand juries. It is not uncommon for federal prosecutors who have a grand-jury investigation in one district to uncover crimes that happened in another district. In that situation, there is no need to convene a second grand jury — there’s no prohibition against doing that, but neither is it required. What is typically done is the investigation is completed before a single grand jury; then, when the indictment is filed, the defendant may move to change venue on any counts as to which venue is proper in another district.
Alternatively, some reporting suggests that the term of the grand jury that Smith has used in Washington has expired, and that is why he has stopped using it. That’s not implausible, but I’d be surprised.
...
www.nationalreview.com
The answer, as with most grand-jury questions is, we don’t know.
Grand-jury proceedings are secret. The Trump special counsel, Jack Smith, is not talking (which is as it should be), so most of what we are learning comes from lawyers for witnesses who’ve been subpoenaed — and from former president Donald Trump, who seems to have running commentary about the probe (and the prosecutor) on his Truth Social platform.
I am an Occam’s Razor kinda guy. In that vein, I’d say convenience is the simplest explanation for why Smith is suddenly presenting witnesses before a grand jury in Palm Beach, Fla., when he and the Justice Department had been using one in Washington, D.C.
Smith is apparently questioning a number of witnesses who are based in Florida. It would be a hassle for many (or all) of these people to travel to Washington to provide what is probably, in most instances, fairly brief testimony. Prosecutors — like most people whose work involves getting cooperation from others — grasp that the harder you make things, the less cooperation you get (at least when you’re dealing with people who are just witnesses, rather than people who may have criminal exposure and are seeking leniency). If Smith is trying to bring the Mar-a-Lago investigation to a conclusion in the near term, it has to be easier for him and his staff to travel to Florida and interview a bunch of witnesses than to make a bunch of witnesses travel to D.C., where they’d have to miss work, find accommodations, and wait around.
To be sure, the need to obtain evidence and testimony from Florida underscores that this is a case that should be in Florida. The subject of the investigation is at Mar-a-Lago. The relevant documents were stored at Mar-a-Lago. The major June 2022 meeting, at which Trump’s lawyers allegedly misled the government about whether he had surrendered all the documents in his possession that bore classification markings, was at Mar-a-Lago. The FBI search was at Mar-a-Lago.
But of course, the Justice Department (whose National Security Division was running the investigation for months before Smith was appointed) wants the case to be centered in Washington, not Florida. In Washington, the jury pool is heavily anti-Trump. In Washington, all grand-jury matters were certain to be litigated before (now former) chief district judge Beryl Howell, a Democrat who spent years working for sharp-elbowed partisan Pat Leahy on the Senate Judiciary Committee and then was appointed to the court by President Obama. (Not surprisingly, it was Howell who ruled that Trump’s lawyer Evan Corcoran had to testify and provide his notes of conversations with Trump to the special counsel, reasoning that they were not protected by the attorney-client privilege because of the crime-fraud exception.)
As a result, the government set up shop in Washington. Because relevant government agencies, such as the National Archives and Records Administration, are in Washington, and because the grand jury that Smith is likely to accuse Trump of obstructing is in Washington, there is an adequate basis to conduct the prosecution there. (Under federal law, venue for an indictment is proper in any district where part of the alleged crime was committed.)
Nevertheless, the real action in the Mar-a-Lago case was, as you’d reckon, in Florida. But that’s not where the Biden Justice Department wants to plant its flag. Florida is a red state where Trump lives, where the jury pool is apt to be more sympathetic to him, and where — as we saw when Trump’s motion for the appointment of a special counsel, though legally meritless, was granted by Trump-appointed district judge Aileen Cannon (at least until her order was reversed by the Eleventh Circuit) — the court may not be as favorable to the Justice Department in matters Trump as have been Judge Howell and most of the D.C. court (whose judges are handling hundreds of Capitol riot prosecutions).
I am assuming that Smith is using the Florida grand jury because it makes things easier in terms of interviewing witnesses and gathering other relevant evidence. But there are other theories out there.
Some are speculating, for example, that perhaps Smith may be planning to bring charges in both Washington and Florida. There may, after all, be some crimes for which venue would not lie in Washington. Let’s say, for example, that Smith believed he could prove Trump unlawfully disseminated national-defense intelligence in Florida, or had such intelligence documents moved from one unauthorized location in Florida to another unauthorized location in Florida. These acts would be substantive crimes that occurred only in Florida (even though they would also be evidence that he obstructed the grand jury in Washington).
I do not buy this “Florida-only crimes” as a rationale for using two grand juries. It is not uncommon for federal prosecutors who have a grand-jury investigation in one district to uncover crimes that happened in another district. In that situation, there is no need to convene a second grand jury — there’s no prohibition against doing that, but neither is it required. What is typically done is the investigation is completed before a single grand jury; then, when the indictment is filed, the defendant may move to change venue on any counts as to which venue is proper in another district.
Alternatively, some reporting suggests that the term of the grand jury that Smith has used in Washington has expired, and that is why he has stopped using it. That’s not implausible, but I’d be surprised.
...
Why Does Trump Special Counsel Smith Have Grand Juries in D.C. and Florida? | National Review
Probably just for convenience, which reflects the fact that the case should be in Florida, not Washington. But we’ll find out soon enough.
www.nationalreview.com
