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- [00:00]
Steve Scrovan
Headlines from our sister station kpfa.
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Lauren Schmidt
For Pacifica, I'm Lauren Schmidt. Three U.S. service members have been killed and five others seriously wounded. That's according to U.S. central Command, who posted 2X saying the casualties are part of what it calls Operation Epic Fury in Iran. The Red Crescent reports at least 201 people have been killed and more than 700 injured as US Israeli strikes continue. For its second day. Iran's Revolutionary Guard says it has launched retaliatory strikes on US Bases and Israeli military sites across the region. In Israel, at least nine people have been killed in a missile strike on the town of Bet Shemesh. The Council on American Islamic Relations, the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, is encouraging all Americans to contact the White House and their members of Congress to demand what they call the Trump administration's, quote, unnecessary, unjustified and unconstitutional war. Close quote. Edward Ahmed Mitchell this was an illegal war.
- [01:36]
Michelle Singletary
It's just as illegal as the Iraq
- [01:38]
Russell Mokhiber
war was in 2003.
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Michelle Singletary
And it's time for Congress to do its job, to exercise its authority over the declaration of war and stop this war before more innocent people and before more American soldiers die.
- [01:49]
Lauren Schmidt
California Democrat Ro Khanna is urging Congress to convene Monday to vote on Thomas
- [01:55]
Steve Scrovan
Massie and my War powers resolution to stop this war.
- [01:59]
Lauren Schmidt
Protests unfolded nationwide yesterday, with more planned today and Monday. In San Francisco, the Iranian American community of Northern California is protesting in Union Square in support of a democratic transition in Iran, Hamid Azimi.
- [02:14]
Ralph Nader
The change in Iran must happen organically from within Iran.
- [02:20]
Lauren Schmidt
For Pacifica, I'm Lauren Schmidt.
- [02:23]
Ralph Nader
You're listening to KPFK 90.7 FM, Los Angeles.
- [02:28]
Eric S. Fish
This is John Nichols of the Nation magazine and you're listening to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
- [02:34]
Ralph Nader
Stand up.
- [02:35]
Eric S. Fish
Stand up. You've been sitting way too long.
- [02:42]
Steve Scrovan
Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. My name is Steve Scrovand. David Feldman is out today, but filling in is our producer with the dulcet tones, Hannah Feldman. Hello, Hannah.
- [02:52]
Hannah Feldman
Hello, Steve. You sound very dulcet as well today.
- [02:56]
Steve Scrovan
Thank you very much. And the man of the hour, Ralph Nader. Hello, Ralph.
- [02:59]
Ralph Nader
Hello, everybody. We're gonna talk about this so called State of the Union speech and consumer protection, the meaning of Jesse Jackson's legacy and all about rebellious grand juries.
- [03:13]
Steve Scrovan
On today's program, we continue our remembrance of the late Reverend Jesse Jackson. Our first guest will be personal finance expert Michelle Singletary. Her award winning personal finance column, the Color of Money is carried in dozens of newspapers nationwide, including the Washington Post. We'll speak to her about her Washington Post column, how the Reverend Jesse Jackson Taught Me to Keep Hope Alive, her personal experience with the Reverend Jackson and why his message still resonates in an era of blatantly regressive racial and economic policies. There is an adage that a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich, meaning it's pretty easy for a prosecutor to convince a group of citizens assembled in a grand jury that there's enough evidence to charge someone with a crime. In this process, prosecutors can offer hearsay evidence and even evidence obtained illegally, and the grand jury doesn't hear any evidence from the defense. Many legal experts argue that the current system tips the scales of justice in favor of the prosecution. However, these days, grand juries are pushing back against the prosecutorial overreach of the Trump administration, refusing to indict, for instance, the man who tossed the sandwich don't know if it contained ham at a Customs and Border Protection officer. And federal grand juries have thrown out cases against New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI Director James Comey, and other weak and apparently politically motivated cases. To tell us all about this, we welcome Eric S. Fish, professor of law at the UC Davis School of Law, who along with former DA of San Francisco Chesa Budin, penned an article in the New York Times titled a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich not in the Trump Era. And we close out the show with Ralph's assessment of the State of the Union speech. As always, somewhere in the middle. We'll check in with our indispensable corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokiver. But first, let's speak to a personal beneficiary of the late Jesse Jackson's legacy.
- [05:10]
Hannah Feldman
Anna Michelle Singletary writes the nationally syndicated personal finance column the Color of Money, which appears in the Washington Post on Wednesdays and Sundays. Her award winning column is syndicated by the Washington Post News Service and Syndicate and is carried in dozens of newspapers nationwide. In 2021, she won the Gerald Loeb Award for commentary. She has written four personal finance books, including what to do with youh Money, When Crisis Hits A Survival Guide, and the 21 Day Financial Path to Financial Peace and Freedom. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Michelle Singletary.
- [05:48]
Michelle Singletary
Thank you.
- [05:50]
Ralph Nader
Welcome, Michelle. After the passing of Jesse Jackson at age 84, I read the obituaries and the columns, and there weren't that many columns actually compared to some prominent entertainers and artists who have passed away, which surprised me. But one column which stood out very prominently was by our guest right now, Michelle Singletary. And it made such an impact that we wanted her to go through it paragraph by paragraph, because it's so personal, and it testifies to the motivating genius of Jesse Jackson as he went all over the country and spoke to all kinds of audiences at all ages. You start your column, which appeared in the Washington Post on February 18, Michelle, by saying, quote, I am who I am today. In part because of a speech I heard in fifth grade at Matthew A. Henson Elementary School in Baltimore. It was 1970, and the auditorium was full of little black boys and girls fidgeting, waiting for the speaker to begin. Can you continue narrating that experience for us?
- [07:05]
Michelle Singletary
Sure. I am somebody. A voice boomed from the stage, shaking us to attention. I have never forgotten that day when the Reverend Jesse Jackson spoke life into me, eventually inspiring me to go to college. His words pushed me to overcome the feeling of being unwanted. At 4, I had to go live with my grandmother. Big Mama. My four siblings and I, one older, three younger, arrived at my grandmother's West Baltimore home disheveled, hungry and sick. We only had the clothes on our backs, and had it not been for my grandmother, we would have been placed in foster care.
- [07:42]
Ralph Nader
Your grandmother, in effect, raised you and your siblings because your parents were not there for you.
- [07:49]
Michelle Singletary
That's correct, yeah. I went to go with my grandmother when I was 4. My older sister was 8. I had a sister behind me, 3, and my twin brothers, who were just 2 years old, and through pretty awful circumstances. We ended up in her care. And I lived the rest of my childhood and all through college with my
- [08:11]
Ralph Nader
grandmother, who you refer to often for her wisdom in your columns. By the way, we've all heard Jesse Jackson's I am somebody speech, and white people react to it differently than black people. Not that the reactions are plus or minus. They just don't have the background to understand fully why he kept saying, I am somebody. You wanted the audience to respond that way. So his I am somebody speech from Jackson. Tell me your reaction.
- [08:45]
Michelle Singletary
So at the time that he came to my school, you know, I'd been at my grandmother's house for a couple of years, and my mother kind of drifting in and out of my life, breaking one promise after another. The first time I recall seeing my father was when my grandmother took us to see my grandfather in prison. And my grandfather said, that's your father sitting over there in the corner. And I looked over, and he was sitting there. And that was the first time I ever recall seeing him. And so at that time in my life, I felt really quite Alone and quite like, why would my parents want me? What was going on? And he came in that auditorium, and right away he said, I am somebody. And he said, repeat it after me. I am somebody. And I just was like, I am somebody. I'm not just that little girl whose parents couldn't take care of her. I could be something.
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Ralph Nader
And.
- [09:34]
Michelle Singletary
And he talked about, you know, you are somebody even if you're on welfare. You are somebody if you're black. Never. He just kept going through that, and he kept saying after each one, repeat after me. I am somebody. And I started to, you know, like many of the other little boys and girls, I started, you know, shouting it at the top of my lungs. And it just. Every time I said that, I could just feel myself getting larger. I could feel my confidence growing. I could feel like, you know what? I can overcome all of this to be somebody. And I was raised by my grandmother, who was the granddaughter of enslaved individuals. And so she was fearful of a lot of things, rightfully so. I mean, think about it. We like to think that slavery happened so long ago, but it's just about a couple of generations, really. And so my grandmother lived through Jim Crow. She lived through the period where you couldn't get a job making the same amount of money if you were African American, you couldn't live in certain neighborhoods. You know, you struggled all the time. You worried all the time. And so a lot of that she passed on to me. And so when I would talk about what I wanted to be, she was like, well, you know, don't dream too big. You don't want to be disappointed. And here's was this man saying, I can dream, I can dream big, that I can overcome all of this. And so it was so inspiring. And I just remember I was actually a writer in elementary school. I had a. My first column was called Ask Michelle. My grade school teacher suggested that I write a column to answer the questions from my fellow classmates. So he saw the writer in me, and I didn't think I could do this until Jackson said I could.
- [11:18]
Ralph Nader
You know what was good about the I am somebody, Michelle, is that he prefaced it in ways that relate to the people that he was communicating with. For example, he would say, quote, I may be poor, but I am somebody. I must be respected, protected, never rejected, end quote. He would say, I may be on welfare, but I am somebody. He even said, I may be in prison, but I am somebody. So he made it very specific to people's frame of reference in the audiences that he was addressing. Tell us a little more about his words which motivated you in one situation of great difficulty after another that you surmounted.
- [12:03]
Michelle Singletary
Yeah. You know, the thing I loved about Jackson is people sort of think he was only talking to blacks, but he was talking to the disadvantaged and the poor, anybody who felt like their situation couldn't be overcome. And so he. He was an advocate for those who didn't make a living wage, white or black. But in my case, what he said to me was that you can push past people who will think of you as less than. And throughout my career, you know, there's always been this attack on affirmative action, that somehow. That if you were targeted as maybe trying to help you get a job, that somehow you only got the job because of the color of your skin. I won a scholarship to the University of Maryland at College park from the Baltimore sun papers because they didn't have enough black reporters, and they recognized that, and they wanted to train them. And so I won a scholarship. And with the idea that I would come and work for them, they weren't picking me because I couldn't write. I was a really good writer in high school. I won the scholarship. I went to Maryland. I did all the things we supposed to do. And even at Maryland, people were like, oh, she just got here because she's black. And somehow that I wasn't as smart as them, that I didn't study as hard. I studied as hard as they were. I excel in college. I got the job at the Sun. Not just because I'm black, because I performed. I wrote. And even when I got to the Washington Post, there were people like, oh, well, you know, she's in the affirmative action hire. And I'll never forget, I wrote a column about this, the business editor who recruited me. And I asked him one day, I said, you know, did you hire me just because I'm black? Because I was just hearing all these whispers about it. And he said, yes. And then he invited me into his office, and he sat me down on the couch. And this is reminiscent of Jackson's I am somebody speech. And so he said, I hired you because you were black. I hired you because you're a woman. I hired you because you're a good reporter. I hired you. And at that time, I was studying a master's degree in business from Johns Hopkins University. So he said, you know, he looks to you getting advanced degree in business. I hired you because I had an expertise in bankruptcy coverage. He said, I hired you for all of those reasons. It is the totality of who you are. That made you a good hire for the Washington Post. Now, I did joke to him, he should have started there. But even by the time I got to the Washington Post, people were still questioning my credentials. And when I walk into a room, often they see a black person. They don't see the totality of my experience. And so we're fighting that. And even to this day, the Trump administration, destruction of diversity and equity, inclusion, they misunderstand what that means. It doesn't mean that you're giving jobs, that people are unqualified. It means that you're recognizing that the playing field wasn't even and that let's even even this playing field. I liken it to a football team. You can't have a football team of all quarterbacks and win. You have to have a quarterback, a running back, a linebacker. You have to have a good kicker. It's the same thing. Your team has to encompass people who represent all kinds of abilities to have a winning team. So DEI isn't a giveaway. It isn't charity. It's recognizing that when you have people from different backgrounds and different perspectives of different skill levels, you have a winning team. But all my career, I have to fight against that. And when it comes to those kind of moments, I think about that editor, what he said to me, and I think about what Jackson said. I am somebody. And I quiet those voices because what he told me that day in that gymnasium, that auditorium, that I am somebody. And so I don't let people question me anymore. And even when I sometimes question myself, because I work to get where I am, I am good at what I do because of my experience and my gifting. No one gave me that job. I worked for it.
- [16:05]
Ralph Nader
We're talking with Michelle Singletary, the longtime syndicate columnist for the Washington Post, on consumer issues, consumer finance issues, and other empowerment matters for consumers who are very vulnerable, losing their savings or having their consumer dollars ripped off by unscrupulous vendors. You mentioned Trump's attack on diversity, equity and inclusion, which he reduced to dei. And very cleverly, he created this DEI and kept saying DEI without spelling it out. The Democrats picked it up and kept saying dei. So after a while, people forgot what it was all about, which is what you just described. And in the rhetorical battle between the Democrats and Trump, he won again. And had he spelled it out, or had the Democrats spelled it out and explained it instead of just repeated dei, he would be seen as much more of an unprecedented racist president and misogynistic president than he is even today. So you mentioned in your column, Michelle, the National Urban League State of Black America 2025 report. Can you explain that?
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Michelle Singletary
Yeah. So every year they have, I think for the last two decades or so or four decades, I think they've issued a State of Black America. And the most recent one was really quite concerning because of the dismantling of civil and voting rights and the elimination of diversity initiatives. The report said, and I quote, we are watching an attempt to turn back the clock to an era when the full humanity of all Americans was not recognized. When the idea of true humanity, equality was treated as a threat to the social order. And so, you know, you look at the unemployment rate for African Americans is higher. For African American teenagers it's higher. We're still not paid the same. Even when our qualifications are the same housing, we have the same housing rate, the same homeownership rate as when discrimination, housing discrimination was legal. And it's not because we don't handle our money well or we're not saving. It's the same things. It's redlining, it's, you know, credit scoring issues. If we're more likely to be a renters, then we don't have that information in our credit files about managing mortgages. And there is a black recession going on. And in particular Doge when it just decimated the federal government workforce at one point that was one of the few places where African Americans could get jobs and excel and move up the economic ladder. And when they cut all those federal employees, they did a great deal damage to the black middle class people who got those jobs. And make no mistake about it, federal workers work as hard as anyone else. In fact, one of my colleagues who does data analysis looked at how hard federal workers work and it turns out they work a lot harder than people in private sector. And so to your point, you know, he says these things like DEI and then it becomes sort of this phrase, that equivalent of people getting jobs, winning, qualified. It's like Obamacare. When you call it Obamacare and you do studies, people are oh, that's a terrible program. Oh my gosh, you know, it's terrible. They're not helping people. But when they call it the Affordable Care act and list the exact same qualities of that program, like getting rid of pre existing conditions, letting young adults stay on their parents health insurance until they're 26, when they list all of those attributes, people are like, oh yes, that's a great program. So when you call it something that is connected to a black person, it's like it's Terrible. But when you call it what it is, the Affordable Care act, they're all for it. It's the same thing with Di, to your point. And so when we still allow them to say things like, you know, affirmative action hires and and that somehow, you know, just because there was more effort to bring an inclusion. My son is on the autism spectrum, and so he will be included in that idea of, let's try to make sure that we have jobs for people who have disabilities. It's not just black people, it's women. It's people who were disadvantaged for one reason or another. And this is really important for people who are listening and thinking about this. You know that expression, when one person's lifted up, we all are lifted up. This is true. And we see it happening now with the economy and affordability. If you don't make sure that people have a living wage, if they can't earn a good, decent salary, it impacts all, all of us, including the people at the top.
- [20:44]
Ralph Nader
Did you ever meet Jesse Jackson after you attained some prominence in journalism?
- [20:51]
Michelle Singletary
I actually did. Tavis Smiley used to have a State of Black America forum every year, and I had the opportunity to be on a panel, and he and I were at that program at the same time. So I was able to meet him as an older adult working for the Washington Post. And it was quite an honor. In fact, after one of the panel, we all kind of got together in one of the rooms and we were just talking about the state of affairs. And it was one of the best times of my life just to be around all these magnificent civil rights leaders and people fighting the good fight for consumer protection and job equality on the job. So it was quite wonderful to see him. And I told him about that, and he was very appreciative of me mentioning to him that his speech was so inspiring to me as a child.
- [21:40]
Ralph Nader
You know, Michel, he had extraordinary qualities. He would go to where the problems were. He wouldn't just put out a statement. He would go to the farmers who were losing their farm. He would go to people in the south who were losing their homes. He would go to the environmental injustice areas where the poor were exposed to more toxic pollution than people with higher incomes. And his legacy now is also in his sons. A lot of people don't know that. Jonathan Jackson has been a member of the House of Representatives from Illinois since 2023. And Jesse Jackson Jr. Who was a representative in the House, is running to recover his old seat from Illinois. So the struggle will go on, not just in terms of the example and commitment that he sat, but also through his children and his wonderful wife, who raised the family under enormous pressure and threats that were coming in on Jesse and his family. He never liked to talk about that because he just encouraged more of it year after year. But that was one of the examples of his physical courage and not just moral advocacy for civil rights and a more just society and a world. And he did have a worldwide impact as well. He would go to trouble spots and represent the oppressed. He would liberate political prisoners from dictatorships. Tremendous physical energy to go along with his civic determination. Can we go to Steve?
- [23:22]
Steve Scrovan
Michelle, you may or may not have thought too much about this, but I'm going to ask it anyway. I'm curious about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his attitude, his negative attitude toward affirmative action. What do you make of that, if anything?
- [23:38]
Michelle Singletary
Well, he certainly is challenged in that department, and some people might think that he was an affirmative action to the court itself. So I think it's like quite hypocritical for him to be so dismissive of affirmative action programs. So that's probably all I can say about that. It's very disconcerting, his position on that. I'm an advocate for it, have always been. And again, I think Ralph is right about how we name things. It's so interesting. I was at church on Sunday and the pastor's message was about naming things and how we have to be very careful about what we call ourselves, what we the periods in life that we're in that names matter, what we call things matter. And by objecting to affirmative action, the way the racists name it is some sort of charity work for workers. But if you name it by what it really was, which was a way to bring equity to past injustices, then how can you argue against that?
- [24:40]
Ralph Nader
Of course, the original affirmative action was for white males, wasn't it? People forgot that.
- [24:48]
Michelle Singletary
People forget a lot of things.
- [24:49]
Ralph Nader
The first woman allowed into Harvard Law School was the year 1950, and the law school was over 100 years by then. Before we close, I want to read the last few words of your column on the passing of Jesse Jackson. Quote, I can still hear Jackson call to tune out those who would tell me I'm less than I found my voice because of Jackson and have used it to help people understand personal finance and build legacy wealth for their family. I am somebody because Jackson told me I was and I believed him. End quote. Marvelous testimony to Jackson's legacy. Michelle Singletary. Well, thank you very much, Michelle Singletary. Keep doing the good work you're doing and reaching many, many consumers around the country and telling them that the only way they can help themselves is to begin to help themselves. And they've got to have the information and the rights that are under the law that equip them with defending their hard earned consumer savings and their hard earned consumer dollars, which are being eroded by a massive corporate commercial crime wave. Thank you, Michelle.
- [26:04]
Michelle Singletary
Well, thank you. And thank you for your long service in the name of helping consumers.
- [26:09]
Ralph Nader
Thank you.
- [26:10]
Michelle Singletary
I think what you've done to make sure that people are heard and seen is extraordinary. And I follow the biblical principles that if you help the least of these, you've done what you're supposed to do. And I'd like to think that I've done that. And I know that you've done that.
- [26:25]
Ralph Nader
We'll put you on the mailing list for any future reports that you might want to read. Once more, give the website for our
- [26:33]
Michelle Singletary
listeners, washingtonpost.com and then follow me on Instagram.
- [26:38]
Steve Scrovan
We've been speaking with Michelle Singletary. We will link to her work@ralphnaderradiohour.com when we come back. We're going to find out why grand jury indictments in the Trump era are no longer a slam dunk. But first, let's check in with our corporate crime reporter Russell Mokhiber.
- [26:53]
Russell Mokhiber
From the National Press building in Washington, D.C. this is your corporate crime reporter Morning minute for Friday, February 27, 2026. I'm Russell Mulkhyber. For the grandson of the inventor of Reese's Peanut Butter cup, all it took was one bite of a Valentine's Day Reese's Mini Heart to leave him, well, heartbroken. It didn't taste like milk chocolate, Brad Reese told NBC News it tasted cheap. Reese said he looked at the front of the package and saw the words peanut butter but not the word milk chocolate. And when he flipped the bag over and read the list of ingredients, he was, as he put it, horrified. Hershey's, which makes the beloved buttercups and seasonal spin offs like mini hearts, had replaced the milk chocolate with a chocolate flavor flavored coating that definitely was not chocolate, according to Reese. For most of my life, I ate at least one Reese's Peanut Butter cup a day and sometimes something seasonal like a Reese's Heart or Reese's Christmas Tree, Reese said. But this was inedible. I threw it in the garbage. For the corporate crime reporter, I'm Russell Mulcyber.
- [27:53]
Steve Scrovan
Thank you, Russell. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader RADIO Hour I'm Steve Scrovan, along with Hannah Feldman and Ralph Something extraordinary is happening at federal courthouses across America.
- [28:03]
Hannah Feldman
ANNA Eric S. Fish is professor of law at the UC Davis School of Law. Professor Fish's primary research is in criminal law, with particular focus on the ethical duties of participants in the criminal process, the structure of immigration crimes, and the system's emphasis on administrative efficiency. He has also served as a public defender, first with the San Francisco Public Defender's Office, and later as a federal defender in San Diego. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Eric S. Fish, thank you for having me.
- [28:34]
Ralph Nader
Welcome indeed. ERIC we're going to talk about the grand jury in American legal history and how the recent emergence of grand juries stopping becoming rubber stamps for prosecutors and pushing back, rejecting indictments requested by Trump's prosecutors, or some would call Trump's persecutors. So let's start with the grand jury as an institution. Eric how did it emerge and how are grand juries chosen?
- [29:06]
Eric S. Fish
Well, great. So, I mean, if you go all the way back, it begins with the Assize of Clarendon in the 1100s with Henry II creating sort of the common law. But initially it was just sort of 12 men from each county who would tell these traveling judges about crimes that had been committed in the county. And that was sort of the basis for prosecution. As it evolved over the centuries, it was adopted in the American colonial systems as kind of a governance institution. I mean, grand juries could investigate crimes. Grand juries were made up of randomly selected citizens of the kind of colony, and there weren't really public prosecutors in the same way in the 1700s and early 1800s. So really the power of accusation lied lay with private individuals and grand juries, they served both a screening function and kind of an investigation function. So they were really quite powerful and sort of a mechanism of democratic governance in a certain way, sort of like the pedigree is then over the course of American history, they were basically their power has been dramatically diminished to the point that today grand juries really are, in the significant majority of jurisdictions, sort of just rubber stamps for what the prosecutor wants to have happen. This is a feature of changes in procedure that have happened over time. Only the prosecutor gets to speak to the grand jury. There's no defense lawyer present. There's no judge present. In most jurisdictions, grand jury proceedings are secret. There's no transcript. There's no it's, in fact, a crime in certain circumstances to discuss what happened in the grand jury. And the rate at which they approve charges is extraordinarily high. Like, it is a rare event for a prosecutor to fail to get an indictment from a grand jury, unless the prosecutor wants to fail, which does happen sometimes, most notably in police use of force.
- [30:50]
Ralph Nader
Give us some figures on how rare.
- [30:52]
Eric S. Fish
The most recent available statistics from the federal system showed that in a year with over 100,000 prosecutions, only six declinations happened because grand juries refused to indict. There aren't really statistics from state systems, in large part because of the secrecy of the process, and the federal system has stopped publishing statistics. So the most recent was, I believe, was from 2017. And it's just vanishingly, vanishingly small. And notably, even in those six cases, you know, the prosecutor can wait for a new grand jury and try again. There's not even a kind of double jeopardy bar. But it is extraordinarily rare for a grand jury to decline to indict a case.
- [31:30]
Ralph Nader
And how are grand jury members chosen from the public?
- [31:34]
Eric S. Fish
I believe the same way that credit jury members are sort of randomly selected from voter rolls and or DMV lists. I'm more familiar with how pedigrees are selected, but they're basically just members of the public, adults. Same basic exclusions that exist for Pettit juries. I'm sure many of the listeners have been selected for grand jury duty. They also serve for longer periods of time. So Pettit juries just, you know, like trial juries, they sit for a single trial and then their service is done. Grand juries can sit for a month, maybe even more. They serve for around a month in the federal system. And during that time, they're just sort of at the beck and call of the prosecutors. If the prosecutors want to bring evidence before them to try to get a case indicted, then the grand jury is in session.
- [32:15]
Ralph Nader
Well, unfortunately, most of the American people don't realize what an honor it is to serve on a grand jury, or a civil jury for that matter, that it's one of the great democratic institutions in the history of the world? And so is it easy to get out of a grand jury selection process as it is to get out of the civil jury election process, which a lot of people exercise because they don't want to spend the time that's required in this law enforcement institution?
- [32:49]
Eric S. Fish
Well, so I must confess, I've never been a prosecutor, so I don't really know. Like, in the pedigree selection process, there is a adversary forum in which the defense lawyer and the prosecutor can each strike people, sometimes for cause, sometimes not for cause. And the Judge rules on for cause strike. So it's very easy for a potential credit juror to say something like, I believe in abolishing the criminal justice system or something like that, and then the prosecutor is going to strike them possibly for cause or whatever the inverse would be. I don't think the same competitive striking mechanism exists for grand juries. I have to imagine that if you say something in the grand jury about how you can't be unbiased, that the prosecutor who is running the grand jury would have some way to relieve you. But having never either served on a grand jury or conducted one, because I've never been a prosecutor, I don't know that I can say too much more aside from, you know, that they don't exist in the same kind of adversarial litigation environment that Pettit juries do.
- [33:42]
Ralph Nader
Isn't it true, Eric Fish, that that once reluctant jurors experience the jury system, they're very high on it, they're very praiseworthy of it, and they're happy they went through the experience?
- [33:55]
Eric S. Fish
Oh, yes, I've certainly seen that. You know, I was a public defender for four years and we would interview juries after cases, and they spoke extremely highly of it. Even in your sort of lower level DUI cases where you would think they would be annoyed to have to waste, you know, two or three days of their time, they find the process really kind of energizing. And I did too, from the advocate's perspective. Going into my career as a public defender, I was rather skeptical of the jury system, like, who were these lay people to decide things. But my experience was that they actually did take it very seriously, even in the kind of more misdemeanor lower level cases that I sometimes, sometimes litigated. Like they would deliberate for hours, sometimes multiple days. Their comments to us afterwards suggested there were factions, that they took it very seriously, that they were kind of debating, you know, what the evidence showed, that they read the jury instructions very carefully. So, yes, I think the jury system, to the extent that jury trials happen and grand juries too, is there's a
- [34:48]
Ralph Nader
lot to recommend it at the federal level. How many members are there of a grand jury, or does it vary?
- [34:54]
Eric S. Fish
I think it varies. I believe it's north of 20. It's certainly more than a pet jury, but I think it probably. It varies by district. So districts call into session grand juries, they serve for that particular federal judicial district for a period of time. It's generally more than the 12 in a pedigree, but it's not I don't think it's fixed. And there's also no unanimity requirement, as there is in a pedigree. I believe it's just majority vote.
- [35:23]
Ralph Nader
What are the models at the state level that improve on the fairness of the grand jury procedure, if there are any.
- [35:32]
Eric S. Fish
Right. So I think California is sort of the best system I'm aware of in state systems, but there are others that have some more sort of rights, protective features, I believe. And it doesn't totally track the kind of blue red state divide like Kansas has fairly robust grand jury procedures. Minnesota does as well. So in California, there are a number of different features of the grand jury process that make it more sort of procedurally robust. And many of these are features like downstream products of state supreme court cases that were decided in the 1970s. So in California, there is an obligation for the prosecutors to present exculpatory evidence before the grand jury. So not just evidence of guilt, but also evidence of innocence. The prosecutor also is limited in the use of hearsay testimony. In the federal system, where I mostly practiced, there is no limit on hearsay testimony. So the grand jury can literally just hear the arrest report being read by some case agent who had nothing to do with the case. And this is, from what I understand, at least, how most grand jury proceedings work in the federal system. They just get some agent who works at the prosecutor's office to read the arrest report, and then the grand jury indicts. In California, they have to actually bring live witnesses. There are some exceptions to that, but by and large, you can't just have an agent of the state reading the arrest report. It has to be the arresting officers saying what happened and then the, you know, other eyewitnesses, complaining witnesses, whoever else actually providing the evidence. And there's also a mechanism for review in California, so you can, as the defense lawyer, get the transcript of the grand jury proceeding and challenge it before the magistrate judge and argue that the indictment was improperly obtained. And so it can be reversed for that reason. That does not exist in the great majority of systems. So I think California is a pretty good model. There's also this alternative system called the preliminary hearing that a lot of states have adopted that kind of circumvents the grand jury and brings it into the courtroom. So the judge and the lawyers are there and they're trying to argue before the judge about whether the probable cause threshold has been met. I think lawyers prefer that system in part because the defense lawyer is involved and they can sort of negotiate with the judge. The Judge has an incentive to get rid of the case. I think it would be better to have more robust grand jury procedures because that would get sort of the community involved in the screening of cases and take it outside the legal profession.
- [37:56]
Ralph Nader
Well, let's get into the remarkable rebellion of federal grand juries against the Justice Department prosecutors under the Trump regime since January 2020. That was the focus of your op ed article with Chesa Boudin in the New York Times recently, February 13th.
- [38:18]
Eric S. Fish
Yeah, so it's been happening over and over again, which is really quite remarkable, especially considering how rare it is for federal grand juries to refuse to indict. I cited the statistic earlier in a single year with hundreds of thousands of cases, that had happened only six times. I mean, there have been numerous cases, but his political opponents. So Letitia James, she who brought that massive civil suit against him in New York, she was being prosecuted for a form of mortgage fraud, and the grand jury refused to indict. Similarly, James Comey, the former FBI director, the Trump administration attempted to prosecute him for statements made to Congress, basically claiming that he had lied under oath in Congress. The grand jury, from what we understand, we don't have all the information, but from what we understand, declined to bring two of the charges. And the prosecutor then sort of refiled a different indictment document and only showed it to the foreperson of the grand jury. And the judges later ruled that it had been improperly obtained. So the grand jury, it seems like, was a pretty effective screen against those charges, too. The six members of Congress who issued the video telling members of the military that they have the right to refuse illegal orders. The Trump administration tried to prosecute them for interfering with the discipline of the military or some other kind of nonsense charge, and the grand jury unanimously rejected it for all six members of Congress. So those cases all took place in Washington, D.C. or Comey's and Ms. James's were in Virginia. There have also been grand juries throughout the country in Chicago and in Washington, D.C. who have rejected cases against protesters. So the famous incident where Department of Justice employee threw a sandwich at some Customs and Border protection officers in D.C. the grand jury refused to file a felony charge, and then a pettit jury acquitted on the misdemeanor charge. So he was acquitted of both by the grand jury and by the sort of trial jury. In Chicago, grand juries have refused charges against a number of different protesters that the Trump administration has tried to bring. And in Minnesota, the federal prosecutor's office has actually declined to bring charges against a number of protesters, or at least felony charges, which would have to go before a grand jury because they are afraid, I think rightly so, that the grand jury would refuse to indict. So this has been sort of a really kind of remarkable series of rejections of the Trump administration's prosecutions by sort of ordinary people serving on grand juries, and one that is largely unprecedented in modern American history. I can't think of another example of grand juries rejecting such high profile cases. And so many of them, nothing really comes to mind. So in a certain sense, one might say this is the grand jury's original purpose. Right. So as I was sort of saying at the beginning here, initially they were a democratic institution of governance. They were a local check on the sort of colonial oppression of the British, at least in the early colonial period. They rejected, they refused to indict prosecutions under the Stamp act, under the revenue laws. They were sort of a tool of anti colonial resistance to British oppression. And this seems at least broadly analogous to that sort of local grand juries in places like Minnesota, Chicago, Washington, D.C. are rejecting the Trump administration's attempts to prosecute its political enemies and bring trumped up charges against protesters.
- [41:34]
Ralph Nader
Were you saying you're op ed, quote, this is how grand juries were meant to work? End quote? Citing Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren and John Jay, the first Chief justice in the United States. You want to quote them?
- [41:47]
Eric S. Fish
Yeah. So they both viewed grand juries as a bulwark against government oppression, as an important case screening mechanism, as a way to sort of protect. This is paraphrasing, as a way to protect ordinary innocent citizens from malicious prosecution. The irony, of course, is that grand juries have largely stopped serving that function in kind of the modern system. But this is an example of it, of them kind of going back to their original purpose.
- [42:15]
Ralph Nader
How much of the rebellion that you cite by grand juries under Trump are due to very sloppy justice department indictment requests. 2900 Justice Department lawyers have quit or have been pushed out in the last year from the U.S. justice Department. They're severely understaffed, and many would say they're very unqualified lawyers seeking to bring these indictments. Can you reflect on that?
- [42:43]
Eric S. Fish
Yeah, absolutely. I guess that's sort of a puzzle for the thesis of our piece in a certain way, because these cases are really weak. Like the case against Comey is extraordinarily weak. It relies on interpret like an extremely bad faith interpretation of an ambiguous response he made to Ted Cruz in a congressional hearing. And the case against the six members of Congress is absurdly weak. It relies on a, like they are saying legally correct things in this video. So to say that that's a crime just seems impossible. So it could be that grand juries are taking up the mantle of the old system and sort of reasserting their role. It could also be that maybe grand juries always had the potential to screen out such terrible cases. It was just that prior departments of justice didn't bring terrible cases. You know, federal prosecutors by and large are risk averse. Professional lawyers who have fairly prestigious jobs and don't like failing before their bosses and don't like coming back to the office and telling the boss, oh, the grand jury refused to indict for the first time in like five years. So it could and I think likely to some degree is the case that just the sloppiness and incompetence of these prosecutions is what's causing grand jury to revive itself.
- [43:54]
Ralph Nader
Could it be also frivolous cases? Describe the sandwich case.
- [43:58]
Eric S. Fish
Yeah, so the sandwich case, basically this fellow Department of Justice employee in Washington D.C. threw a sandwich at a CBP officer and was then prosecuted for assaulting a federal officer. And from what I understand, the charge required some showing of like injury, which is just, you know, obviously hitting someone with a subway sandwich isn't going to cause injury. I doubt the officer who got hit would say otherwise. So the, this is not the sort of thing where in any other context felony charges would have been brought in the first place. Obviously the Trump administration wanted to kind of make an example of this fellow. So they tried to bring felony charges. But it's 20 something ordinary people hearing this from a Department of justice prosecutor, I guess, were rightly skeptical of the proposition that some kind of injury had resulted from subway sandwich.
- [44:44]
Ralph Nader
We've been speaking with Professor Eric Fish, a law professor at the University of California in Davis, California. Let's go to Steve.
- [44:52]
Steve Scrovan
Professor Fish, you in the article talk about some reforms that you would institute. You've touched on some of them different ways the system has been sort of reformed. But where do you recommendations?
- [45:05]
Eric S. Fish
Yeah, so a number of different things. So a lot of what California does I think has much to recommend it. So giving the prosecutor an obligation to present not just evidence of guilt, but also sort of all the evidence, including evidence of innocence and excluding illegally obtained evidence. So if you know, the search was done without a warrant, for example, or if a confession was provided in custody without Miranda rights, not informing the grand jury about that, giving the grand juries an opportunity to hear from live witnesses. So People who were actually at the scene, saw the events, whatever, whatever. The topic of the crime is not just allowing multiple levels or even one level of hearsay. So, you know, not having a system as exists in the federal system where the indictment in virtually every case is just based on an arrest report that is read to the grand jury by a like, case agent who works for the prosecutor's office and then having some mechanism of review after the fact. So, you know, grand jury proceedings are secret. There's no judge there, there's no defense lawyer there. The prosecutor kind of controls them. I mean, they're extremely deferential to the prosecutor. The prosecutor decides what evidence gets presented, the prosecutor decides what witnesses speak. There are some states where the defendant has a right to speak to the grand jury, like in New York, but that's an unusual rule and most defense lawyers strongly advise against speaking to the grand jury. And of course they're secret. So making the transcript available and providing some mechanism of judicial review would provide a check on prosecutorial behavior. It would make those other rules enforceable. It would like, ensure that hearsay doesn't come in. It would ensure that gulpatory evidence is provided. It would ensure that illegally obtained evidence is excluded. And so, you know, if the grand jury proceeding were more trial, like in those ways, it would empower grand jurors to actually hear and consider the evidence and not just rubber stamp whatever charges the prosecutor wants to bring, but, you know, evaluate the credibility of witnesses and evaluate all the evidence and serve as a real screen instead of just doing whatever the prosecutor wants.
- [47:08]
Ralph Nader
Let's go to Hannah.
- [47:10]
Hannah Feldman
You've written about the checks and balances in the legal system in regards to defense lawyers. And I'm curious, when you look at reforms, what the role could be for a sort of alleged devil's advocate, if you have someone from criminal defense attorneys association sitting in on grand jury proceedings or where you propose defense attorneys factoring into these reforms.
- [47:36]
Eric S. Fish
Oh, great. Yeah. So I mean, so this is another. So I basically wrote two law review articles with Chase. So one was about grand jury reform and case screening and sort of pretrial criminal procedure. The other was about defense lawyers and the place they have in the separation of powers. So, you know, most defense lawyers in this country are court appointed. This is sort of the legacy of Gideon. It's something like 80% of cases have a court appointed defense lawyer. And there are different institutional mechanisms to provide defence lawyer appointments. They run the gamut from a county, just like hiring a lawyer and that lawyer works directly for the county to Independent public defender organizations that are structured as nonprofits and have their own sources of funding, some public, some, some like foundations and so forth. By and large, I think it's better to have more defense lawyer independents and to have structural public defender organizations as opposed to just solo practitioners who are hired on a case by case basis by the county. And that's because, you know, defense lawyers can serve as a kind of institutional check. If they're in a public defender office, they can act collectively, they can negotiate collectively with the prosecutor's office. Obviously, the prosecutor's office acts collectively. They can do things like advocate for particular reforms, reforms to the bail system, reforms to the way the grand juries work. They can also coordinate appeals and so sort of seed and argue in the trial court and then raise on appeal systematically legal violations that they find in the way cases are being processed. So I do think, broadly speaking, maybe part of a package of reforms that I would prefer would be more widespread embrace of institutional public defender offices and less use of contract lawyer systems, you know, individual defense lawyers being paid and then having this kind of siloed existence within the system where you're just negotiating on behalf of individual clients and you're not really pursuing systemic reforms.
- [49:38]
Ralph Nader
Well, we're out of time. We've been speaking with Professor Eric Fish, University of California Law School at Davis. Is there anything else, Eric, that you want to cover that we haven't touched on?
- [49:50]
Eric S. Fish
No, that was great. Thank you so much for the time. It was a great conversation.
- [49:53]
Ralph Nader
Do you get a lot of reaction to the Times piece by the press?
- [49:57]
Eric S. Fish
I did, yeah. I got a lot of emails. I think Tracer got more emails. He's a little more prominent. But I got a lot of emails from kind of people I'd never heard of, and, and some people I had heard of, mostly very positive. I think the kind of default response was that it gave people hope in
- [50:10]
Ralph Nader
very dark times which get on NPR or PBS at all?
- [50:15]
Eric S. Fish
No, I have not. At least not yet.
- [50:17]
Ralph Nader
We've been speaking about grand jury resistance under the Trump regime to Professor Eric Fisher, law professor at the University of California at Davis. Thank you very much, Eric.
- [50:30]
Eric S. Fish
Thank you so much for your time.
- [50:32]
Steve Scrovan
We've been speaking with Eric S. Fish. We will link to his work@ralphnaderradiohour.com Stand up.
- [50:39]
Ralph Nader
Stand up.
- [50:40]
Steve Scrovan
Now, this program began 12 years ago when we wanted to get a alternate State of the Union from Ralph Nader. Well, in that tradition, Ralph, what do you have to say about this year's State of the Union?
- [50:52]
Ralph Nader
Well, it's more like a fantasy state of Der Fhrer speech. It sugarcoated the grim reality that Trump refuses to recognize and take accountability for, such as the state of poverty in our country, more people being forced out of Medicaid programs he's instituted to help pay for tax cuts for the wealthy that will jeopardize millions of people in terms of food supplements, including children. He talked about his creating the greatest transformation of any economy in world history. Of course, he never mentioned that he refuses to support the increase in the federal minimum wage, which is by far the lowest in the Western world, or do anything at $7.25 an hour, by the way, he refused to recognize that he is exacerbating hunger in America, which is at the highest rate in the Western world, including child hunger. He refused to recognize in his law and order words that he is the softest president on corporate crime ever, having ordered his Justice Department to dismiss dozens of pending cases against corporate criminals inherited from the Biden regime. I thought the most cruel aspect of this speech may have escaped most commentators. Steve and Hannah he dwelled on the Israeli hostages and the ones whose bodies were later to be found in the rubble in Gaza, and never mentioned that his weapons and his diplomatic cover and that of Biden's slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinian children, women and men and starved them to death at extraordinary rates, blowing up hospitals, hundreds of mosques, schools and places where people reside and go to markets. He completely ignored that. His belligerence toward Iran was so extraordinary that it made me think he actually is going to strike Iran in the next few days. And that would be, of course, both a federal crime because he's using funds unappropriated by Congress and a constitutional violation because he didn't go to Congress for a declaration of war, is wrapping other people's virtues time and time again against his vices. Here's a chronic draft dodger who once said, looking at a cemetery of US Soldiers in Europe, he said what was in it for them and described them as a bunch of suckers and losers. And here he is praising veterans and giving a couple of them, one on active duty, one a hundred years old, the Congressional Medal of Honor, musing that someday he hopes he'll get the Congressional Medal of Honor. I mean, the monstrous ego has no limit. I marveled at his energy. I mean, here he is almost 80 years old, and he didn't stumble once, he didn't take a drink of water once. And there's something to the energy level that's perpetrated by Someone so suffused with a monster ego of vengeance and greed. He's really extraordinary in that way. You have to give him that one. I thought his repetition of lies, and I say they're lies because he's made these false statements again and again and they've been corrected by mainstream press and he still makes them. That qualifies, describing them as lies before millions of people watching the State of the Union address. But I thought one of his worst was how he continues to try to destroy confidence in our electoral system. It was NBC had a correction list right after the speech where they described his statement, no more crooked mail in ballots except for illness, disability, military travel, end quote. And they said that statement is false. And he also said cheating in elections is rampant. And NBC corrected him by saying that is false. Cheating in elections is not rampant in our elections, like people fraudulently. There are a lot of other problems with our elections presided over by money and the two party duopoly, but having voters cheat is not one of them. So all in all, it was fodder for political scientists for years to come. A dictatorial serial law violator, self enriching, chronic liar, cruel, vicious to vulnerable people and people without power, which is the majority of the people elected dictator. This speech, which went for one hour and 48 minutes, the longest State of the Union speech ever, will be analyzed for a long time, with the question at the center of the analysis being how could so many tens of millions of voters be taken in by Trump's mouth, his lies, his false statements, his fantasies, his fake promises, his lack of any kind of record, whether as a businessman where he used bankruptcies as a strategy, self admitting that and his record as a politician in the first term. That's the question we have to ask ourselves. And it's too easy to say that the Trump voters couldn't stand the Democrats who abandoned them. That's not enough. They could have not voted for Trump. They could have written in a vote. They could have voted for the Green, Libertarian or other minor parties. They can't use the Democrats as a hundred percent excuse for voting for Trump. And a lot of them didn't. They just liked Trump. They liked his prejudices, they liked his lies, they liked his fantasies, they liked his fake promises.
- [57:08]
Steve Scrovan
So you're not a big fan, Ralph. That's what I'm getting from this. Did you listen to Governor Virginia Abigail Spanberger's rebuttal from the Democratic side?
- [57:18]
Ralph Nader
Yes, again, very disappointing. She asked repeatedly, is this president working for you? And she answered it by saying, we all know the answer is no, end quote. That's not specific enough. She should have said something about raising the minimum wage, which would have gone to $15, say an hour, and that's 25 million workers would have gotten a raise. She didn't raise the frozen Social Security system benefits. She didn't raise cracking down on corporate crooks that are taking hundreds of millions of dollars from consumer dollars and consumer savings. She didn't mention any of the specifics. It was the usual Democratic Party selection to respond to a Republican president's speech and give the Democrat a chance to audition themselves before a national audience. So once again, the Democrats showed they don't know how to produce an authentic record. They don't know how to produce an authentic agenda. They don't know how to produce a compact for America, which would begin to answer if it was authentically supported day after day all over the country. It would give an answer to tens of millions of voters who say, what does the Democratic Party stand for anyway, other than raising a lot of money and making general promises that don't relate to the specific experience where people live, work and raise their families back home?
- [58:52]
Steve Scrovan
Well, thank you for that, Ralph. I look forward to listeners commenting at Ralph Nader Radio Hour on your commentary on the State of the Union. I want to thank our guests again, Michelle Singletary and Eric S. Fish. For those of you listening on the radio, that's our show. Few podcast listeners stay tuned for some bonus material we call the Wrap up featuring Francesco de Santis with in case you haven't heard, a transcript of this program will appear on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour substack site soon after the episode is posted.
- [59:20]
Hannah Feldman
Subscribe to us on our Ralph Nader Radio Hour YouTube channel and for Ralph's weekly column. It's free@nader.org for more from RussellMochieber, it's@corporatecrimereporter.com to order your copy of the Capitol Hill Democracy Dies in Broad Daylight. It's@capitol hillcitizen.com the producers of the Ralph Nader Radio Hour are Jimmy Lewart, Hannah Feldman and Matthew Maron. Our executive producer is Alan Minsky.
- [59:47]
Steve Scrovan
Our theme music, Stand Up, Rise up, was written and performed by Kemp Harris. Our proofreader is Elizabeth Solomon.
- [59:54]
Hannah Feldman
Join us next week on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Thank you, Ralph.
- [59:58]
Ralph Nader
Thank you. Everybody. Stand up 818985.