Grand jury convened to consider possible charges in Trump criminal probe
The panel will sit three days a week for six months and reportedly listen to several matters, not just the Trump case.
A grand jury in New York City has been convened to consider whether former President Donald Trump and other members of the Trump Organization will face criminal charges.
Tuesday’s bombshell report from The Washington Post notes that the grand jury panel will sit three days a week for six months and reportedly listen to several matters, not just the Trump case. “Generally, special grand juries such as this are convened to participate in long-term matters rather than to hear evidence of crimes charged routinely,” Shayna Jacobs and David A. Fahrenthold wrote.
Trump and the Trump Organization have been investigated for years by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr., who is probing questionable business practices, including the inflation of the value of several Trump properties to secure loans and deflating the value of those same properties to reduce tax liability.
According to the report, the D.A. is also investigating compensation paid to top Trump Organization executives.
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“This is purely political, and an affront to the almost 75 million voters who supported me in the Presidential Election, and it’s being driven by highly partisan Democrat prosecutors,” the former president wrote in a response statement. “Our Country is broken, our elections are rigged, corrupt, and stolen, our prosecutors are politicized, and I will just have to keep on fighting like I have been for the last five years!”
He called the seating of the grand jury “a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in American history.”
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According to legal experts, the seating of a special grand jury is not uncommon in what has been a large, complicated investigation. The Post report notes that it is unclear if this grand jury will be asked to return an indictment. According to New York Law School professor Rebecca Roiphe, a former assistant D.A., grand juries can be used in the early stages to potentially subpoena documents.
The seating of the grand jury signals an escalation in the investigation against Trump.
“The prosecutors are convinced they have a case,” said Roiphe. “That’s at least how I read it.”
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