Donald Trump says he has “such respect” for the New York grand jury considering potential charges against him. But that respect could be short-lived.
In a Truth Social post Wednesday, the former president said:
I HAVE GAINED SUCH RESPECT FOR THIS GRAND JURY, & PERHAPS EVEN THE GRAND JURY SYSTEM AS A WHOLE. THE EVIDENCE IS SO OVERWHELMING IN MY FAVOR, & SO RIDICULOUSLY BAD FOR THE HIGHLY PARTISAN & HATEFUL DISTRICT ATTORNEY, THAT THE GRAND JURY IS SAYING, HOLD ON, WE ARE NOT A RUBBER STAMP, WHICH MOST GRAND JURIES ARE BRANDED AS BEING, WE ARE NOT GOING TO VOTE AGAINST A PREPONDERANCE OF EVIDENCE OR AGAINST LARGE NUMBERS OF LEGAL SCHOLARS ALL SAYING THERE IS NO CASE HERE. DROP THIS SICK WITCH HUNT, NOW!
The implication of Trump’s post, I gather, is that because the Manhattan grand jury hearing the hush money case reportedly is not meeting Wednesday or voting on an indictment this week, that means the grand jurors are, as Trump put it, “SAYING, HOLD ON, WE ARE NOT A RUBBER STAMP.”
While it’s certainly possible that grand jurors have been skeptical of the government’s presentation, there isn’t public evidence of that. And it misunderstands the process to presumptively attribute scheduling changes to grand jurors themselves, rather than the prosecutors who are running the grand jury presentation.
To be sure, there’s truth to the general point that grand juries are seen as being rubber stamps. Grand jury presentations are one-sided, and the evidentiary standard is relatively low: Grand jurors just need to find reasonable cause to believe that someone committed a crime. It’s simply a formal accusation, which would need to be proved at trial beyond a reasonable doubt.
That’s not to say that these grand jurors will necessarily vote to indict Trump, only that scheduling changes don’t mean that they won’t.
