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No Grand Jurors Voted to Indict 6 Democratic Lawmakers

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NBC News: “It’s exceedingly rare for a federal grand jury to reject prosecutors’ attempts to secure an indictment, since the process is stacked in the government’s favor. Federal grand juries need a minimum of 16 members to have a quorum, and they max out at 23 members. Just 12 grand jurors need to agree that the government had probable cause to indict, a threshold much lower than the unanimous ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ standard that a petit jury needs to convict.”

“In 2016, the Justice Department investigated more than 151,000 suspects, but grand juries returned just six ‘no bills,’ per DOJ statistics. The vast majority of assistant U.S. attorneys will go their entire careers without being rejected by a grand jury like this. As NBC News previously reported, the lawyers who attempted to bring the case are political appointees, not career prosecutors.”

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About Political Wire

goddard-bw-snapshotTaegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.

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