A grand jury has been reportedly assembled in Washington DC as part of an investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into claims of Russian interference in the 2016 US election, according to the .
Mr Mueller was appointed as special counsel in May of this year by the US Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
, the deputy attorney general decides the scope of the investigation after he or she determines that criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted.
Mr Rosenstein had to select a lawyer with a "reputation for integrity and impartial decisionmaking" - Mr Mueller had served as FBI director from 2001 to 2013.
US President Donald Trump's lawyer, Ty Cobb, said on Thursday that he was not aware that a grand jury had been convened but that the White House was “committed to fully cooperating” with Mr Mueller.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders declared that the president was not likely the subject of the investigation.
“Former FBI director Jim Comey said three times the president is not under investigation and we have no reason to believe that has changed,” she said.
It's understood the grand jury began to convene in recent weeks.
Dr William Partlett breaks it down.
What is a grand jury?
This is a federal investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller appointed by the Department of Justice, so this is a federal grand jury.
That is the body that actually issues criminal indictments in the federal system. They generally comprise of 20-23 members, who are ordinary citizens, and they have huge powers of subpoena (order to attend court) and investigation.
They are used by prosecutors to essentially collect information through subpoenas and so forth, and then the information is presented to the grand jury, which makes a decision about whether they’re going to criminally indict certain individuals for violations of federal law.
The grand jury has been assembled in Washington DC – what is the significance of this?
There was already an existing grand jury that was being used in Northern Virginia and Alexandria, and now it’s been expanded to Washington DC.
There’s a lot of speculation about why one would be opened in Washington DC. It's hard to tell, but it probably suggests that there’s significant information that still needs to be gathered, including activities that took place in the district of Colombia in Washington DC, so that’s why they’ve opened the federal grand jury process there.
What will the process allow special counsel to do?
It allows special counsel Mueller, who’s prosecutor of this case, to call witnesses and subpoena individuals and financial records.
That could mean they’re looking into a lot of financial dealings at the moment, so they can get all kinds of information - financial records and so forth - of people like former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, and maybe even the president's son Donald Trump Jr. - and try to present that to the jury to see to what extent this type of information is a potential violation of federal law.
The grand jury has the power to access information from a number of sources including Donald Trump Jr. Source: AAP
What will the next steps be?
The key thing to keep in mind is that all these grand jury proceedings take place secretly, so you have no idea what’s happening in there. We don’t know what the information is.
All we can probably suggest is because he’s opened a new one in Washington DC, that the investigation is proceeding at pace, and potentially even expanding.
How long is the process likely to go on for?
Grand juries sit for 18 months, so this could go on for a while. Mueller is known to be very thorough, and obviously this is a particularly highly charged situation. He’s going to want to get as much evidence as possible.
This is essentially the evidence-gathering stage at the moment. That’s what he’s doing. There is no question that federal grand juries have huge powers that grand juries at state level in the US don’t have, so he’s got a lot of tools at his disposal to really gather as much information as he can on whatever it is they’re looking into.
Will President Trump be worried by this?
The sitting United States president most likely cannot be criminally indicted. Certainly, if there’s an indictment of a former Trump associate like Flynn or Manafort, that’s a problem politically for him.
Certainly, if it’s someone like his son, that’s an even bigger problem.
I’m sure he’s concerned to some extent that this is going at a quick rate, but he himself is very unlikely to get indicted, because of the constitutional problems of indicting a sitting president.
- with AFP
The grand jury investigation may take months and may look at alleged attempts by President Donald Trump and others to obstruct the FBi investigation. Source: AAP
