Who leaked the Trump grand jury?
When reporters land a major scoop, sometimes it’s because they worked hard and dug in to unearth information that no one involved wanted out there. Other times it’s because someone on the inside wanted a story out there, and simply handed it to a reporter. This brings us to the question of how the Washington Post and AP both managed to learn last night that the Manhattan DA is empaneling a grand jury to bring indictments in the criminal case against Donald Trump.
There is the possibility that a reporter randomly overheard a DA’s office employee who was being too loud in a hallway or restaurant; this does occasionally happen. But it feels far more likely that someone leaked this information on purpose. That raises the question of who would even have this information to begin with, and why they would leak it.
The number of people who would know about this grand jury is very small, and most of them either can’t or wouldn’t ever say anything. It would be a crime for grand jurors to leak anything, so let’s rule them out. Let’s also rule out any judges or court employees involved with the case; that’s not how they behave. This leaves us with only two logically plausible sources for an intentional leak: a witness, or the DA’s office itself.
Last night’s reporting revealed that witnesses are already testifying to the grand jury. It’s not illegal for those witnesses to talk publicly about it. So it’s possible that one of the very first witnesses decided to inform the media that the grand jury exists. But why, and to what end? If this was an attempt at sabotaging the process, the witness would seemingly have leaked details of the process. But no details have been included. So logically, it doesn’t feel like a witness is doing the leaking.
This would leave the scenario where the Manhattan DA’s office itself leaked the fact that a grand jury has been empaneled for indictments. This would make logical sense, given that the news is surely rattling Allen Weisselberg, a guy the DA is hoping will become rattled enough to cut a plea deal.
The bottom line is there’s no way to know for sure who leaked the news of the grand jury. But if it is a strategic leak from the prosecutor’s office, it would suggest that more such strategic leaks could be coming. Grand jury indictment processes are normally secret until they aren’t. But this grand jury process could end up playing out in a more public manner.
