We The People can convene a Grand Jury under the 5th amendment but it is never recognized as an official Grand Jury of the same people unless selected by the current government processes. Just look at all the filings people like Mario Apuzzo and others did following the constitution but were ignored. The American Grand Jury the indicted Zippo was formed under the guidelines of the constitution but if not selected by the good ol boys the indictment isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Should it be? Absolutely.
The law states for instance, grand jury terms are 18 months. There are counties in this country, like in TN, where there are career jury members some of whom have served for decades. The heart of government corruption lies in the grand jury process, just the opposite of it's intention. It was intended for the people to convene and investigate corrupt officials....go figure..
Great & vital points, imho.
They consider such a self-selected Grand Juries as not unbiased. . . and it is often the case they are not. Just as in this case, this Grand Jury was formed of people who were already predisposed to indict the people who they eventually indicted on the charges that were eventually in the indictment. In fact, that panel was formed for that purpose. It was a Mueller Russia Witch Hunt investigation writ large, although they had suspicions and obviously good evidence of actual wrong doing to justify their conclusions. However, they did not have legitimate authority to issue summons and subpoenas to force any testimony or require anyone to provide evidence. That limited the gravitas of any indictment they might bring.
We were pretty much told that if they asked for an indictment they should get it. That after telling us repeatedly that we were the bosses and we were the one in control.
We gave them all but one of their requests and they were Po’ed and it was obvious. It was like they were saying that they were sure he broke the law but they had no proof and so they were making up a charge of Assault on a Federal Officer because the officer fell down and skinned his knee as he ran after him.