Mark Halperin

Is it a fully functioning body now or is it as it's transitioned from the Biden Justice Department, the Trump Justice Department in some crisis or peril from a personnel point of view?

Has there been damage done to our judicial system, to our sense of a proper role for the judiciary, for prosecutors, from the prosecutions of President Trump to now his attempts to inspire the Justice Department to indict some of his political enemies, including some of the people involved in prosecuting him?

Is that just kind of the norm or has there been damage done, do you think?

We traditionally think that grand juries will indict anybody.

The famous expression, a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich.

And yet we've seen very high profile, somewhat numerous instances in which grand juries have declined.

Is that a product of a vast overreach by these prosecutors trying to do the bidding of the president?

Is it a sign of the times that

grand jurors are just going to be more independent because of social media and kind of being liberated by access to information?

What do you think is driving that?

And is it going to grow or is it just a one-off?

I'm all for it in the abstract.

I'm not commenting on these particular cases.

But I think it was intended to be a check.

And I don't know statistically whether these cases are part of a larger trend or just in the numbers we know about make them significant.

But I think prosecutors have so much authority.

And if they can just go in and get anybody indicted they want to without a check on them,

Now, you know, then the check comes at trial, but the grand jury was intended to be a check along the way.

So I'm all for it in the abstract.

But I do wonder I do wonder if it's going to grow it within within the Supreme Court now.