The extreme ways that leftists have weaponized the justice system leading to show trials, star chambers, abuses of the law, and a blatant disregard of the evidence is an evolving totalitarian nightmare. The federal system is already notorious for these things, but the Flint water case, already highly dubious, is starting to make the Feds look good.
The target is former Governor Rick Snyder and associates so it’s already political as hell. But the prosecution isn’t acting like it has a case. Instead, it’s acting like it’s operating in a police state and is doing everything it can to avoid any kind of open process.
The ongoing Flint water case against former Gov. Rick Snyder is relying on an investigative tactic so rarely used that some legal experts aren’t familiar with it.
Known as a one-person grand jury, the process is cloaked in secrecy.
As it everything about it.
It involves the appointment of a single judge to review evidence out of public view and decide whether charges should be brought. In contrast to the way most criminal charges are brought, using a one-person grand jury alters how evidence is turned over to defense attorneys and delays their ability to cross-examine witnesses.
The media has blown up the case, but some of the most basic facts about it are still being kept in a locked cabinet.
We’ve seen this pattern before with Democrats aggressively targeting Republicans, destroying their reputations, only for it to turn out that there was no actual criminal case here.
The very existence of the Flint one-person grand jury wasn’t known publicly until January, when indictments were unsealed in Genesee County against nine former or current government officials, including Snyder. All have pleaded not guilty.
More than four months later, much about the grand jury investigation into Flint’s lead-contaminated water supply and deaths linked to Legionnaires’ disease remains unknown.
That comes from the Detroit Free Press. Hardly a conservative media outlet.
Randall Levine, an attorney for Rich Baird, a former top aide to Snyder facing four felonies, including perjury, said defendants want to know the evidence behind the charges.
“We don’t even know, even to this day, what it is that the government claims (Baird) lied about,” Levine said. “They hide behind the secrecy that’s afforded to them by this one-man grand jury process, all the while Mr. Baird dangles in the wind, his name being smeared.”
The secrecy seems to pervade the process.
The Flint water prosecution team’s written request to appoint the one-person grand jury has not been made public. In recent statements and interviews, the Attorney General’s Office declined to say specifically why it sought a one-person grand jury. The office also could not say when it last used a one-person grand jury, explaining that the information is not tracked.
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, who was asked by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel to lead the Flint prosecution alongside Solicitor General Fadwa Hammoud, provided only a hint as to why prosecutors relied on such a secretive process.
Dana Nessel, it won’t surprise you to learn, is a leftist Democrat. Nessel, Worthy, and Hammoud, a Lebanese immigrant, had trashed the existing Flint investigation and dropped charges against the Flint public officials most directly involved in the mess. Most of those, it won’t surprise you to learn, were Democrats. Nessel and her allies refocused the investigation on much better Republican targets.
And here we are.
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