Being a juror on a grand jury is a constitutionally mandated role that could be required of every adult American citizen at some point in their lives. It’s right there in the Fifth Amendment! It’s also a time commitment and can be a huge drag on your life. In Fulton County, Georgia, for example, grand jurors serve in two-month terms and are required to convene 2 days per week, 8:30AM until 5 or 6, typically.
Anyone who has ever served on a jury or even spent the entire day at a courthouse waiting to see if they’ll get selected for a jury knows that actively participating in your government via a jury is a serious commitment. It’s something to be respected because of the sacrifice of time and effort into doing one’s civic duty. Someone needs to tell that to the Trumper goons who have decided that it’s a great idea to leak the personal details of the Georgia grand jurors who voted to indict Donald Trump for the fourth time, because they just weren’t raised right. Per CNN:
Names, photographs, social media profiles and even the home addresses purportedly belonging to members of the Fulton County grand jury that this week voted to indict former President Donald Trump and 18 co-defendants are circulating on social media – with experts saying that some anonymous users are calling for violence against them.
[…]
the names being circulated on these sites appear to match the names of at least 13 of the 26 grand jurors that served on the panel in Fulton County. It’s unclear if those names are the actual grand jurors or just people with the same name. Some addresses appear to be wrong.
First and foremost, there will be no linking to any of these posts because I’m not a monster. Secondly, this has happened because grand juror names were released as part of the indictment, as it’s considered public record. (Federal grand jurors are afforded privacy, if you were wondering.)
These people treat their politics as if it’s a sports team, and it’s maddening. The grand jurors were simply doing their constitutionally mandated job, and now they have to deal with unhinged ghouls across Al Gore’s internet simply because they were selected for jury duty, and some conservative jerks decided they didn’t like the outcome of the jury.
I shouldn’t be surprised, and yet I am. The complete lack of empathy for the Jurors is staggering if completely expected. Trump has spent his entire political career being a huckster to his followers, convincing them they, and they alone, are the right “true” Americans while simultaneously lining his pockets, and they love him for it. None of them seem concerned that their bulls*** has a body count.
These grand jurors are real people whose identities are now splashed out across the internet for anyone to see. Posting their details and sharing personal information about these people is not a win for anyone’s “side.” It’s just harmful and disgusting, and puts everyone at risk. Per CNN:
In one instance, one pro-Trump personality shared screenshots with his more than 2 million followers showing what were purportedly the social media profiles of the grand jurors. That post has since been removed.
The same personality previously promoted Pizzagate, an infamous conspiracy theory that led to an armed man firing an assault rifle at a Washington, DC, pizza parlor in 2016, who claimed he was attempting to find and rescue child sex slaves that he believed were being held at the restaurant. That belief allegedly based on his reading of an online conspiracy theory that falsely connected Hillary Clinton’s campaign adviser to the pizzeria through coded messages in his leaked emails.
Maybe it’s because I watch Law & Order basically every day, but I truly believe that serving on a jury in any capacity is a sacred civic duty. It should be respected by everyone, regardless of outcome, and after the immense commitment is over, jurors should be allowed to resume their normal lives in anonymity and privacy. What’s happening to the Georgia grand jurors is shameful, and Trump should absolutely intervene, but when has that man done anything that didn’t serve himself, and himself only?
(featured image: Amazon Freevee)
