General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCongress can directly request the District Court Judge to release Mueller's Grand Jury materials.
I'm not talking about Mueller's report, but about the raw materials gathered by the Grand Jury.
https://takecareblog.com/blog/congress-has-another-avenue-on-mueller-s-investigation
By Brianne J. Gorod
Chief Counsel
Constitutional Accountability Center
Members of Congress have promised to exercise Congresss subpoena power to get the full report, if necessary, and they should. After all, Barrs summary raises more questions than it answers, and Congress and the public deserve to know more about what Mueller discovered. But Congress also has another avenue for pursuing information related to this investigation: the federal grand jury that has been working with Muellers team for the past two years.
This grand jury has likely seen a treasure trove of information associated with Muellers investigation. As Barrs memorandum notes, Muellers team issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search warrants, obtained more than 230 orders for communication records, issued almost 50 orders authorizing use of pen registers, made 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence, and interviewed approximately 500 witnesses. Some of that information has likely been presented to the grand jury to support the many indictments the grand jury has approved.
Given this, Congress could ask the district court judge to release certain grand jury transcripts and other information it knows the grand jury has seen over the course of the investigation. Such a request would be consistent with federal law. Under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e), while grand jurors and government attorneys are prohibited from disclosing grand jury materials, the district court judge overseeing the grand jury may release those materials in a variety of circumstances, including preliminarily to or in connection with a judicial proceeding.
Moreover, numerous courts have held that district courts have inherent authorityoutside of Rule 6(e)to release grand jury materials when doing so is in the public interest. As one put it, it is certain that a courts power to order disclosure of grand jury records is not strictly confined to instances spelled out in the rule. (In fact, the D.C. Circuit is currently considering this issue in a case called McKeever v. Barr.)
SNIP
manor321
(3,344 posts)Karadeniz
(22,267 posts)BigmanPigman
(51,430 posts)bluestarone
(16,720 posts)We need to move on this!!
AncientGeezer
(2,146 posts)pnwmom
(108,925 posts)SNIP
Notably, Chief Judge Beryl Howellthe judge who impaneled the Mueller grand jury and who would make any decision about whether to disclose any Mueller grand jury materialsrecently recognized that a district court retains an inherent authority to unseal and disclose grand jury material not otherwise falling within the enumerated exceptions to Rule 6(e) as part of its supervisory authority over grand juries in the context of deciding to unseal some materials associated with Ken Starrs investigation into President Clinton.