Alabama Politics in
Doc’s Political Parlor
& Home of Lawn Mower Repair

It’s a little odd how this grand jury is being conducted.

They didn’t interview anybody. Like you said in your blog, they didn’t ask anybody to come in. They served them with subpoenas.

They subpoenaed everybody in the legislature that had had any economic interest in the two-year system. But they don’t appear to have an evidentiary trail on any of them. Their bosses are represented by Post Secondary Education. Post Secondary Education would have the contracts, the information about hiring, but the Justice Department doesn’t appear to have any of that. If I were doing it, I would not have subpoenaed legislators to the grand jury without an evidentiary trail.

It looks like a fishing expedition, and they could gather information without embarrassing people. There are substantive concerns they should be investigating. I want to draw a distinction between their legitimate interest in gathering information and the way in which it’s conducted. It has appeared to be about maximum public damage. The media was tipped off so they could be there [when the subpoenas were served]. Most of the time with something like this, you call somebody’s lawyer, set it up, and they arrange a time to come in. These people would have come in.

There are two agendas at work. Some in the Justice office are badly partisan, and believe that anything you can do to embarrass someone gives you an advantage. Others in the division of labor are working the case, trying to do a good job, but they appear to lack both history and first-hand and documentary information.

I presume they had to release them. The senators wanted more time. They wanted to buy 30 days to get individual legal representation, to figure out what their exposure was, to get up to speed on what the government was looking at. If they couldn’t get 30 days, you have to presume they said they would plead the 5th Amendment, and once they plead the 5th, you have to release them because you can’t bring somebody and make them plead the 5th on the stand just to embarrass them.

The questions that I understand they want to ask are how did the person get the job, what are their qualifications for it, what do they do, who is their supervisor, and what proof do they have that they did it. But they don’t seem interested in the background info or evidentiary trail that they could have access to.