Fed grand jury info delay eyed

The Justice Department is working to place a lid lasting a half century on when courts can consider disclosing materials from federal grand juries, an effort painted by critics as a significant amplification of court secrecy.

President Biden’s Justice Department has continued to seek the delay after it was suggested during President Donald Trump’s administration.

The Washington Post previously reported the Justice Department proposals.

Secrecy in grand jury deliberations has long been a feature of the American court system. Joshua Stueve, a Justice Department spokesman, confirmed the push for the 50year delay and noted in an email to the Daily News that the “law as it is now requires grand jury secrecy for sound public policy reasons, including protecting the innocent.”

“Several courts of appeals have ruled that judges cannot release historically important grand jury material because there is no explicit authorization for such release in the rules,” Stueve said in the email. “What the department is asking for is greater openness, not less openness.”

But judges sometimes determine that grand jury materials can be published.

A fight over the release of grand jury materials from Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election snaked its way up to the Supreme Court last year. The issue was ultimately declared moot.

The Justice Department is also pressing to allow for broader application of gag orders on witnesses.

Last year, Jonathan Wroblewski, a Justice Department lawyer, wrote in a letter to the Criminal Rules Advisory Committee that a previous suggestion of a 30-year delay — made during President Barack Obama’s administration — was insufficient.

“Grand jury secrecy should be preserved except in the most extraordinary cases of historical value,” Wroblewski said in the letter, which was dated July 10, 2020.

Jennifer Stisa Granick, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, condemned the Justice Department effort and asked the Criminal Rules Advisory Committee to swat the proposal. She said in a memo last week that the proposal would “cabin judges’ authority to unseal grand jury records and bar the public from accessing vital information.”

“This increased secrecy would percolate through the entire legal system with damaging results,” Granick wrote.