The Earth Shook after Grand Jury Indictment of Robert Mueller

By George Miller

Yes, The Earth shook after a grand jury indictment of Robert Mueller on Wednesday, June 12, 2019. Literally- shortly after a Citizens’ Grand Jury handed Prosecutor Larry Klayman, founder of Judicial Watch and CEO of Freedom Watch USA, their indictments of Mueller on all nine criminal counts of violations of federal law, nailed by principal witness Dr, Jerome Corsi.  Klayman then read it and explained the next steps, thanked the jurors and dismissed them. See press release on FreedomWatchUSA web site.

Klayman, a well-known and to the Left a controversial public interest attorney, is in the business of suing mostly governments and officials- present and past- for breaches of public trust, sometimes winning, despite a stacked judicial bench, but often keeping his opponents at bay and publicizing their alleged crimes.  One of his attributes, compared to most other such attorneys is to help determine wrongdoing and bring the harsh glare of publicity upon offenders. He has won acquittals in high profile cases such as the Bundy Ranch,  BLM Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupiers and other cases. He has forced the government to disclose much information, some of which led to acquittals, more lawsuits and changes in practices. Go to www.freedomwatchusa.org to view Klayman’s biography and case history of successes.

The Robert Mueller Russia election collusion investigation team failed to nail writer and a prime investigation target Dr. Jerome Corsi. Corsi’s strong and public pushback has derailed the DOJ’s case that could have resulted in Trump’s impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by the Senate. It is now a nothingburger. Now, opponents of Mueller/Democrats claim that Mueller and others committed numerous crimes in their investigation of alleged Trump “collusion” with Russia in the 2016 election, which resulted in the defeat of odds-on favorite presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016.  This grand jury was just an early volley to peel back some layers of the onion surrounding the Mueller team case to prove it so.

Event Videos:

Jury Instructions Probable Cause

Mueller Grand Jury Indictment 6-12-19

FOIA Info  Note: this is a massive 185MB GoogleDrive file that has to be downloaded and unzipped.

Meanwhile Attorney-General Barr is now looking into crimes that Hillary Clinton and associates might have committed, in addition to alleged crimes which may have been committed by Comey and Mueller teams. Klayman and allies are using the Citizens Grand Juries to alert the public to what is going on and push the DOJ to take action against the perpetrators’ actions, which he and many others believe were over the top- and prove that they were blatant violations of criminal law.

Now the Democrats have taken a different tack, proceeding with Congressional action, a 24/7 media blitz and challenging Barr’s summary of the Mueller report, which Mueller had agreed with, but then hinted that Congress could take action where he couldn’t/ wouldn’t.

Indicted?

Yes, we said indicted, NOT as yet convicted. A grand jury merely studies allegations and gathers information to determine if there is probable cause that a crime may have been committed, in which case, they indict the suspect. They gather and analyze whether there is enough information to justify a trial, which has a much higher standard of proof to convict beyond a reasonable doubt. Theoretically a grand jury doesn’t even need admissible court evidence, but it helps.  Even hearsay is acceptable, unlike in a criminal trial. This shows the truth of a quip attributed to New York State Chief Judge Sol Wachtler that you can even indict a ham sandwich. However this case had first person eyewitness testimony.

Case Background

This all stems from the DoJ so-called Russia Collusion investigation. Some say that Mueller’s failure to indict or convict Dr. Jerome Corsi derailed what he believed to be his best chance to indict or trigger the impeachment of Donald Trump for Collusion or obstruction of the investigation into that, which has dominated the news cycle on and off for over two years. Early on, Mueller began to realize that they not only had no proof of that, but not even probable cause for obstruction or collusion. To his credit, he conceded that much in his final report, which caused howls of protest on the left and relief on the right. The high profile guilty pleas/deals  of Paul Manafort, et al, were primarily either “process crimes” or totally unrelated ones (financial, etc.), discovered during the investigation, which went way beyond the scope of a “Russia election collusion” investigation. Some say it was a  fishing expedition to punish/intimidate Trump associates. At this point, The Democrat-run House of Representatives has doubled down on its own “collusion/obstruction” investigation and media frenzy, just as the DOJ is  starting to look into the Democrats own misdeeds in this area.

Grand Jury Background

Many Citizens have been outraged by what they believe was a phony investigation., outraged by the treatment of witnesses who are Trump supporters and frustrated that it wasn’t ended long ago and that offenses of the Hillary Clinton side weren’t also investigated and publicized. So, Klayman came up with the legitimate concept of using a Citizens Grand Jury to make up for that lack of official action. When we first heard about plans for the grand jury, it was supposed to involve three defendants: Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller, former FBI Director James Comey and Assistant AG Rod Rosenstein-  with charges for each. Klayman decided to proceed first with the indictment of Mueller and then in subsequent grand juries hold the others accountable as well.  So, to start he limited it to just one defendant, Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller and mostly only alleged crimes connected to/surrounding  Mueller’s handling of author/writer Dr. Jerome Corsi.

Grand Jury Proceedings

We report here upon the proceedings, minus the jury deliberations, which were confidential, so we weren’t allowed to cover them.

Klayman kicked off the event by explaining to the eight jurors and four observers what a Citizens Grand Jury is, how it works and how it differs from a court-run grand jury and a jury criminal trial. A grand jury isn’t a trial. It’s just a proceeding to gather enough information to see if there is probable cause that a crime or civil violation has taken place. If so, this is turned over to prosecutors, who exercise discretion on whether to pursue charges, litigation, trials or pleas. Information may be presented to the grand jury or the jury might even seek it out itself. A Citizens Grand Jury differs only in that it is managed by private Citizens, not by the courts. Jurors for court trials are selected from voter lists, DMV records and other sources and are drafted involuntarily, although some get out of it, Grand juries may be selected by other methods. For instance, the standing Ventura County, CA grand jury for government-related investigations advertises for candidate jurors and also invites people to apply (I was once invited).

Klayman told the assembly, after explaining the above, what the GRAND JURY INSTRUCTIONS ( Jury Instructions Probable Cause  )- were and proceeded to read nine charges, citing federal statutes that former Special Counsel for the Russian Collusion investigation Robert Mueller allegedly violated and legal criteria to be satisfied to determine if the cited laws were violated.

Mueller finally wrapped up the nearly two year long investigation and delivered his final report just a couple of months ago,  It looks like the charges against him in this proceeding were mostly related to his treatment of witness and writer Jerome Corsi, who was appropriately one of the principal witnesses in this proceeding.

The charges:

1  Violation of grand jury secrecy provisions- Violation of  Federal Criminal Procedure P.6(e)(2)

2 Unauthorized disclosure of Grand Jury information- Violation of 18 USC § 401(2)

3 Improper dissemination of Grand Jury materials, theft of government property- Violation of 18 USC §  641

4 Tampering with  a witness- Violation of 18 USC § 1512

5 Retaliating against a witness- Violation of  18 USC § 1513

6 Obstruction of proceedings before departments, agencies and committees- Violation of  18 USC § 1505

7 Conspiracy to suborn perjury- Violation of  18 USC § 1622

8 Statements or entries generally- Violation of  18 USC § 1001

9 Treason- Violation of  18 USC § 2381 and Common Law

Details: Mueller Grand Jury Indictment 6-12-19

These are very serious charges backed up not only by testimony, but by the FOIA materials, multiple WikiLeaks data dumps and other investigative journalism. We don’t know at this point what else Department of Justice investigations might have uncovered. If convicted of these crimes, Mueller could spend the remainder of his life in federal prison (see penalties in indictment attachment), a threat he allegedly made to Dr. Corsi not so long ago.

Klayman told me that these are only a fraction of crimes he believes Mueller and others have committed just related to the Trump-Russia Collusion investigation.,

Testimony of Dr. Jerome Corsi

Corsi delivered a densely packed three and a half hours straight testimony, mostly on his own, but sometimes questioned by prosecutor Klayman.

The Mainstream Media has done everything it could to discredit (EXAMPLE) (EXAMPLE) hard-hitting Conservative writer Corsi, who tends to attack the left. The example cited directly attacked Corsi’s assertions to the media and attempted to refute his accusations of 4th Amendment violations by the Mueller team. They often lie about his work, which is meticulously researched and profusely footnoted.

Corsi believes that the DOJ/FBI went after him because he is a high-visibility, outspoken Trump ally, because he had worked with Roger Stone and because they incorrectly thought he had somehow colluded with the Russians.

In his lengthy, nonstop testimony via skype from his office, Corsi, a Harvard PoliSci PhD,  told the grand jury that when the FBI knocked on his door one day, he was concerned, but not too worried, because he had done nothing wrong.  That all changed when they brought him in for interrogation and threatened him with prison for the rest of his life. He described the psychological tricks they played and the sheer wearing him down, mentally and physically. He described himself  as a broken man by the time they pitched him a plea bargain, which would have convicted him of a felony, caused him to lose his licenses (insurance, investing)  and livelihood. The alternative would be to fight it, bankrupt the family, lose his home, if not family and maybe still end up in prison for a long, long time. He conceded that he actually considered the plea deal and testimony which would have falsely admitted collusion, which Klayman told the jury is “suborning perjury” by Mueller) But then his wife Monica said she would support him pushing back and fighting it and live with the consequences, since she had married an honest man.  That was all Corsi needed to go into full resistance mode. He nixed the deal and outed Mueller on every talk show he could find- left or right. He believes that this is what finally made Mueller back off on him, although that could change.

When Mueller’s $40 million team of prosecutors and FBI agents discovered discrepancies between what subject Jerome Corsi testified to and actual email and phone records, they pounced. Corsi had testified that he has no connection at all to WikiLeaks and certain people the FBI said were intermediaries to it.  They challenged Corsi and sent him home to study the emails and call records and come back again. He returned with changed testimony, which he said they accepted. But that testimony did not not actually implicate him or President Donald Trump in collusion. What it did do is prove the inconsistency in his testimony and conceded that they had discussed sending an intermediary to talk to WikiLeaks, which by itself is not illegal, but nothing ever happened. as far as Corsi knew.  The FBI has not demonstrated this either.

Corsi quipped that the FBI knew more about him than even he remembered.

All of these alleged (now indicted) offenses by the Mueller team triggered  a mass of charges (as shown above) of jury tampering, witness tampering, conspiracy, obstruction, suborning perjury- culminating in treason, since Klayman deemed this all to be a deliberate, fraudulent and illegal coup attempt to take down the lawful government of the United States. Treason, of course, can even have a death penalty.

The testimony continued, eventually hitting all of Mueller/staff’s offenses.

Testimony of Jason Goodman

Following Corsi’s tour de force, Jason Goodman, a former show business career expert and innovator in stereo videography testified. He now runs a crowd-sourcing organization “Crowd Source The Truth” for fact checking major events/issues. It is reader (Crowd)-driven so he doesn’t stand by all the postings, but allows the readers to absorb it all and make up their own minds.

He provided the video recording services for the event, but also crowd-source checked much of Klayman’s FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) finds. In addition, he helped to identify gaps so Klayman could go back at the sources . Goodman told us that the FOIA data turned over to little FreedomWatch USA was so voluminous that it overwhelmed its resources to assimilate, analyze and present relevant findings. Klayman said that this may have been done to them by design.

So Goodman ingeniously harnessed his crowd sourcing methodology and had his readers comb through much of the thousands of pages of material to help ferret out the gold nuggets of information relevant to the case. Goodman was able to identify serious gaps in information requested, secure some of it and confirm much of Corsi’s testimony and Klayman’s take on the matter. Goodman showed examples and Corsi’s riveting, first-person, encyclopedic testimony carried the day. FOIA Info. 

Klayman and Goodman remarked that DOJ made iut as hard as possible to get and use data, including delaying release, obsfuscating, withholding, which required multiple attempts. In addition, that data were delivered in bitmapped, PDF, OCR-resistant format, making automated analysis, searching and  linking impossible.

Jury Deliberations

Here’s where we go “dark.” Three observers left when the jury deliberations started, but one (this reporter) stayed, with the stipulation that nothing could be disclosed. All I’ll say is that jurors had seen each other in action for hours already, so they were able to quickly pick a jury foreperson, lay out their approach and went right at the deliberations, reading aloud and weighing each charge, discussing any questions, voting on each charge, calling Mr Klayman back to the jury room twice when there were questions they couldn’t resolve on their own.

The jury voted to indict on all counts: Mueller Grand Jury Indictment 6-12-19  , Verdict Form 6-12-19

Next Steps

Members of the jury asked Klayman what the next steps would be after this indictment. Klayman intended to release the results in about a week of the event, widely distributing them and including his comments about the results, their significance and next steps. He discussed the next stage; a Citizens trial as well. One possible byproduct of this proceeding, which is in earnest in any event, would be to inform the public and generate pressure for the DOJ to act. However, DOJ action is unlikely given its compromised status, as demonstrated over the last many decades. This is the primary reason for Citizens’ indictments and trials.

The Legality of Citizens Grand Juries

The Department of Justice didn’t even exist until 1870. Indictments were created by Citizens Grands Juries originally. Nothing ever abolished them, but court-run grand juries became the norm.

In the Supreme Court case of United States v. Williams, 112 S.Ct. 1735, 504 U.S. 36, 118 L.Ed.2d 352 (1992), Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, confirmed that the American grand jury is neither part of the judicial, executive nor legislative branches of government, but instead belongs to the people. It is in effect a fourth branch of government “governed” and administered to directly by and on behalf of the American people, and its authority emanates from the Bill of Rights, the acts of the Grand Jury is the consent of the people.

“The grand jury is mentioned in the Bill of Rights, but not in the body of the Constitution. It has not been textually assigned, therefore, to any of the branches described in the first three Articles. It ” ‘is a constitutional fixture in its own right. In fact the whole theory of its function is that it belongs to no branch of the institutional government, serving as a kind of buffer or referee between the Government and the people”. — Justice Antonin Scalia

“Thus, citizens have the unbridled right to empanel their own grand juries and present “True Bills” of indictment to a court, which is then required to commence a criminal proceeding. Our Founding Fathers presciently thereby created a “buffer” the people may rely upon for justice, when public officials, including judges, criminally violate the law.” —
Justice Antonin Scalia

“The grand jury is an institution separate from the courts, over whose functioning the courts do not preside, we think it clear that, as a general matter at least, no such “supervisory” judicial authority exists. The “common law” of the Fifth Amendment demands a traditional functioning grand jury.” — Justice Antonin Scalia

“Although the grand jury normally operates, of course, in the courthouse and under judicial auspices, its institutional relationship with the judicial branch has traditionally been, so to speak, at arm’s length. Judges’ direct involvement in the functioning of the grand jury has generally been confined to the constitutive one of calling the grand jurors together and administering their oaths of office. The grand jury’s functional independence from the judicial branch is evident both in the scope of its power to investigate criminal wrongdoing, and in the manner in which that power is exercised.” — Justice Antonin Scalia

“The grand jury ‘can investigate merely on suspicion that the law is being violated, or even because it wants assurance that it is not.’ It need not identify the offender it suspects, or even “the precise nature of the offense” it is investigating. The grand jury requires no authorization from its constituting court to initiate an investigation, nor does the prosecutor require leave of court to seek a grand jury indictment. And in its day-to-day functioning, the grand jury generally operates without the interference of a presiding judge. It swears in its own witnesses and deliberates in total secrecy.” –– Justice Antonin Scalia

“Recognizing this tradition of independence, we have said the 5th Amendment’s constitutional guarantee presupposes an investigative body ‘acting independently of either prosecuting attorney or judge” — Justice Antonin Scalia

“Given the grand jury’s operational separateness from its constituting court, it should come as no surprise that we have been reluctant to invoke the judicial supervisory power as a basis for prescribing modes of grand jury procedure. Over the years, we have received many requests to exercise supervision over the grand jury’s evidence-taking process, but we have refused them all. “it would run counter to the whole history of the grand jury institution” to permit an indictment to be challenged “on the ground that there was incompetent or inadequate evidence before the grand jury.” — Justice Antonin Scalia

Editor’s note: The author did assist in the arrangements for bringing the grand jury together, but had no role in the legal preparation or proceedings other than to observe and report.

George Miller is Publisher/Co-Founder of CitizensJournal.us and a “retired” operations management consultant residing in Oxnard

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