Grand juror in Ga. Trump probe says little

Pres. Trump leaves Marietta, Georgia, in January 2021.

Trump White House Archives via Flickr (public domain)

The news is ablaze with the "odd 15-minute PR tour" of the grand jury foreperson in the Georgia Trump investigation, as former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman characterized her appearances to CNN.

Grand juries in the American justice system are secret for reasons that even access-advocate journalists and scholars such as myself tend grudgingly to respect. So I was shocked to see this 30-year-old grand juror, "who has described herself as between customer service jobs" (CNN), appearing above a "foreperson" banner, on my TV this morning.

I'm not naming her here, because I think she has had her 15 minutes. Literally. And she ought not be lauded for her TV blitz, which says more about the desperate breathlessness of the 24/7 news cycle than it does about a millennial's cravings for Likes or secrecy in the criminal justice system.

The legal reality of the foreperson's bean-spilling is not really as dramatic as splashing headlines suggest. In common law and in many states also by statute, grand jurors are bound to secrecy. Georgia grand jurors take an oath to that effect. But experts have pointed out that the grand jury investigating Trump's efforts to "find" votes in Georgia is a special, ad hoc, grand jury, so not necessarily operating under the usual statutes, and that Georgia law authorizes grand juries, though not individuals, to recommend publication of their findings.

More importantly, the judge in the instant matter apparently told grand jurors that they could speak publicly, subject to certain limits. The foreperson here said that she's steering within those limits, which appear to disallow disclosure of information about specific charge recommendations and the deliberations among jurors.

For all the media hoopla, the foreperson actually said very little, only that multiple indictments were recommended and that Trump and associates are targets of the investigation. That much already was publicly known. She refused to say whether the jury recommended charges against the former President himself, only teasing, "You’re not going to be shocked. It’s not rocket science" (CNBC), and there's "not going to be some giant plot twist" (N.Y. Times).

The common law presumption of grand jury secrecy means to protect the identity and reputation of unindicted persons and the integrity of ongoing investigations. Both of those aims further public policy, especially in the age of the internet that never forgets. There is some argument at the margins about when grand jury secrecy should yield to legitimate public interest. Accordingly, grand jury secrecy at common law is not an absolute, but a presumption, subject to rebuttal.

The case for rebuttal is strong when a President of the United States is the target of investigation. If grand jury secrecy is not undone in the moment, it's sure to be leveraged loose in the interest of history. Secrecy in the grand jury probe of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair in 1998 was unsettled by Clinton's own public pronouncements about his testimony. The "Starr Report" ultimately left little to speculation.

In cases of lesser magnitude, journalists and judges, naturally, do not always agree on the secrecy-public interest balance, and modern history is littered with contempt cases that have tested First Amendment bounds.

In a textbook case that arose in my home state of Rhode Island, WJAR reporter Jim Taricani refused to reveal the source of a surveillance tape leaked to him from the grand jury investigation of corrupt Providence Mayor Buddy Cianci. In 2004, Taricani, who died in 2019, was convicted of criminal contempt and served six months' home confinement. He became a symbol in the fight for legal recognition of the reporter's privilege, and, in his later years, he lectured widely in journalism schools. A First Amendment lecture series at the University of Rhode Island bears his name.

Taricani worked closely with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP). A superb RCFP series on "Secret Justice" in 2004 included a now dated but still highly informative brief on grand jury secrecy, and the RCFP has online a multi-jurisdictional survey on grand jury access.

Brookings has a report on the Fulton County, Georgia, investigation, last updated (2d ed.) November 2022.

From soccer pitch to memoir, and now to White House, Rapinoe shines in USWNT equal pay crusade

Rapinoe speaks at the White House (from White House video).

Today a federal district court in California is expected to approve a partial settlement over working conditions in the equal pay battle between the U.S. Women's National Team and U.S. Soccer.  The settlement leaves the central issue of equal pay in play in the case.

As Tokyo seeks "to blunt" its fourth wave of coronavirus, public support and flat-out feasibility fade for pulling off the 2020 Olympic Games even in the summer of 2021.  An Olympic omission will downplay the news of late March that the U.S. Men's National Team failed to qualify for the Olympics upon a loss to Honduras.  Meanwhile the U.S. Women's National Team (USWNT) has been training up for another record-shattering international appearance.

Rapinoe, 2019 (Jamie Smed CC BY 2.0)

The USWNT has not fared as well in court as on the pitch.  On the equal-pay front, the USWNT complainants suffered a major setback in a trial court decision in May 2020.  I wrote then that the court's conclusion was defensible on the law, if arguable on the rationale and tormenting for its rank unfairness.  The complainants plan to appeal.

One is left to marvel at U.S. Soccer's shameless persistence of what I can only imagine is a cold commitment to the bottom line.  At some point, the bad PR for the sport in America must become too costly even in the commercial calculation.  And with the winds having shifted in Washington, the women wisely have opened up other fronts in the war.

A soccer legend in her own time and a hero of mine, USWNT captain Megan Rapinoe has been on a tear lately on the PR-and-lobbying circuit.  On March 24, she joined the J'Bidens at the White House to commemorate "Equal Pay Day."

The White House visit had added significance because Rapinoe feuded with Donald Trump while he was on office—see commentary in 2019 by Sue Bird, Rapinoe's then girlfriend, now betrothed—and Rapinoe said she would not go to the White House even if invited.  In March, President Joe Biden ordered resuscitation of the White House Gender Policy Council, and Rapinoe gave the White House visit a positive review.  Newsweek observed that Rapinoe received a White House invite before Sen. Mitch McConnell.

Here is Rapinoe's statement at the White House.  Watch the whole event at YouTube; Rapinoe's four minutes followed statements by USWNT teammate Midge Purce and First Lady Jill Biden.  

Rapinoe got her money's worth out of her ticket to Washington, because she also testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which was "examining the long-term economic impacts of gender inequality."  Her affirmative statement, below, ran only about two and a half minutes.  With experts representing NGOs also testifying, Rapinoe participated in the questions and answers afterward; the full-length video of the committee hearing is posted online (image from House video).

Rapinoe wound up her testimony with the USWNT rallying cry, "LFG."  She has since remained ready to fight when the situation calls for it, recently, as Comic Sands put it, "eviscerat[ing an] NBA star who criticized female athletes 'complaining' about pay gap."  An HBO Max-CNN Films documentary on the USWNT, titled "LFG" (teaser), is set for release later this year.

All the while, Rapinoe has let no artificial turf grow under her feet.  At the day job on Saturday, she scored for the USWNT to pull out a draw against Sweden and preserve the women's undefeated streak.

Rapinoe published a memoir, One Life, in the fall.

LFG.

W. Kamau Bell solves racism.Or at least makes some progress....

My wife and I were privileged last night to see W. Kamau Bell speak at the Zeiterion Theatre in New Bedford, the show part of the New Bedford Lyceum.  (Also in the audience: our friends, colleague Professor Justine Dunlap and UMass Law alumni City Councilman Hugh Dunn and attorney and radio host Marcus Ferro.)  Bell is a comedian, but at the same time, most definitely a social activist, performing through multiple media, including television, podcasts, and books.  He is most familiar to me from his Emmy-winning show on CNN, United Shades of America, which returns to the small screen with its season 4 premiere, about megachurches, on April 28 (cordcutters pay per episode).

Tongue in cheek, Bell titled his show at the Zeiterion, "The W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism in About an Hour," a play on the title of the controversial 1994 book, The Bell Curve, by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray.  Bell's essential thesis is that race is a construct, but, nevertheless, one we have to pay attention to.  Bell aims "to dismantle racism," but not race, which he believes can be turned into a constructive concept for the good of society as a whole.  Any effort on my part to summarize Bell's approach beyond that point would be inevitably inadequate.  Suffice to say, he works toward his mission with a brilliant combination of observational hilarity, multimedia presentation, and sharing

Outside 'the Z'

about his own life and family.  He does not ask that everyone agree with him on every point, he admonishes.  Rather, he has accomplished enough if people are moved to engage in meaningful dialog about race and social justice, which surely they must be.

The Zeiterion Theatre, or "the Z," is a classic building in old, cobblestoned New Bedford, Massachusetts, opened in 1923 to host vaudeville acts.  Its fortunes have waxed and waned with the history of working-class New Bedford.  The New Bedford Lyceum is a community cultural organization that dates to the city's whaling heyday.  Founded in 1828, Lyceum lectures and events aimed for “the improvement of its members in useful knowledge and the advancement of popular education.”  The Lyceum was disbanded in 1905, but revitalized by New Bedford leaders in 2016.

Bell was a smart choice to fulfill the Lyceum's public-educational mission.  New Bedford has an unusually (for not-Boston, Massachusetts) diverse population in terms of race and economic class, leading inevitably in our trying times to social tension and painfully obvious stratification.  City leaders—such as Councilman Dunn and UMass Law alumna Mali Lim, city coordinator for community education—work mightily to keep the peace, and, moreover, turn tension and diversity into productive community identity.  Bell's lecture at the Z was preceded by four public screenings and discussions in New Bedford and the surrounding area, one at UMass Dartmouth, each reflecting on a theme from Bell's CNN work.