'They don’t have the facts or the law': Expert shatters Trump co-defendant’s demand to grill grand jurors
A legal expert told MSNBC anchor Katy Tur on Thursday that Georgia criminal defendant Kenneth Chesebro's attorneys were out of line when they demanded that Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee allow them to question the grand jurors who voted to indict Chesebro, former President Donald Trump, and seventeen of their associates for allegedly attempting to steal the 2020 election.
District Attorney Fani Willis charged the individuals under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act for their efforts to nullify President Joe Biden's landslide Electoral College victory over Trump.
"What is he talking about?" Tur asked about Chesebro's counselor.
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"He's really talking about the DA's team raising prior conduct by Mr. Chesebro's lawyer, Manny Arora, saying that he asked the court for permission to talk with the grand jurors," legal analyst Lisa Rubin said. "Why? Because in a prior case, he was admonished by a judge in a different county for having done exactly that without asking court permission first. And that's when Scott Grubman, who is Ken Chesebro's other lawyer, got up and accused the DA's lawyer, Daysha Young, of lying, and things got very heated until Scott McAfee, who's the judge here, basically said, 'It's over. I'm not hearing that.''
She continued, "What I think you can see here, though, Katy, coming down the road, if we just want to take a broader lens here, is, you know, litigators say, 'If you have the facts, you emphasize the facts and avoid the law. And if you don't have the facts on your side, you really emphasize the law. But here they don't have the facts or the law. And so what are they going to do? They are threatening to derail this by charging the DA's team with prosecutorial misconduct."
Tur noted that "we hear that a lot."
Tur's guest concurred that "we do, but they want to explore here what happened during the grand jury proceedings and have insinuated that people who are with the DA's team were inappropriately inside the grand jury proceedings."
Tur observed, "So that's why they want to talk to the grand jurors."
Rubin added, "And they want to talk to the grand juror and the state really doesn't want that to happen. Number one, they have a concern about the grand jurors' privacy and security. We already know that Fulton County has been making provisions for the privacy and security of their grand jurors, all of whom were listed by name on that indictment. But they also say grand jury deliberations are off-limits. What could they possibly want to talk to these people about? That's within the scope of what's legal, and the judge is going to allow them to talk about, talk to these grand jurors, but he wants to put some guardrails around it. He wants to know, 'What are the questions you want to ask? What are the topics you want to explore?' And most importantly, 'Give me a brief and show me the relevance of those topics and questions to the defense you want to advance for your client.'"
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