U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro's newly reported "very unusual" move suggests a sinister development in play, MS NOW legal analyst Lisa Rubin said Wednesday.
Rubin took to the airwaves to discuss the convening of a special grand jury in Washington, D.C., with Pirro's top lieutenant Steven Vandervelden tasked with leading the helm.
"Why would Jeanine Pirro want a special grand jury?" Rubin said. "It might be in a circumstance where she can statutorily have that grand jury issue, a report that might dirty somebody up."
Rubin based this claim — that Pirro might be setting out to tarnish someone's reputation — on the significance of a single word: special.
"A special grand jury can issue a report by statute and by federal law, specifically, but it can only submit to the court a report in special circumstances," she said.
"That's with respect to...non-criminal misconduct, malfeasance or misfeasance in office involving organized criminal activity by someone who is currently a public officer or employee."
Said Rubin, "Perhaps the reason for impaneling a special grand jury here has something to do with the permitted subject matter of the report."
Host Alicia Menendez suggested that Pirro might be targeting Jerome Powell, the former Federal Reserve chair who still serves on its board of governors.
Rubin replied the pool of possible targets was broad — but whoever it was likely could not be hauled into court under usual methods.
"Thinking about why would you want a special grand jury, it may be because you already understand that you're not going to be able to meet the threshold for indicting someone," she said, "but you want the public to know that that person has done something that we would consider, in a broader sense, wrong."
Rubin condemned such political attacks as improper — but not unlikely considering the current state of the Justice department.
"That is not the proper purpose of a special grand jury, but I would also submit to you, based on evidence of how this Department of Justice has behaved," she said, "It's not beyond what they have done in prior situations or how they think necessarily."
Pirro's selection of the lightly experienced Vandervelden was another clue how this special grand jury would operate, argued Rubin.
"He is not is an experienced former federal prosecutor or federal prosecutor at all," she said. "He's not somebody who historically has that DOJ experience you would want in a special grand jury context."
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