A federal judge just lit “a real red light” for one of President Donald Trump’s pet prosecutions with an extraordinarily rare move, according to one legal expert.
In Minnesota, a federal judge told prosecutors from the Trump Department of Justice that she wants to see all of the minutes from the grand jury proceedings to see if grand jurors were given all of the correct information in the case against journalist Don Lemon, who was arrested in January while covering a protest that occurred inside of Cities Church in St. Paul.
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 be a warning sign for federal prosecutors because it shows 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.”
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