Xoff Law

As a lawyer, Xoff is a pretty good political consultant. First, he claims that TMJ was violating the law by editorializing "a lot" about school choice. This claim is just wrong. Now he says that the Doyle administration would be legally prohibited from releasing information on who was subpoenaed to appear before the Travelgate grand jury.

Bill. Please. Leave the legal stuff to the professionals.

Grand jury secrecy is governed by Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. It imposes secrecy on grand jurors, government attorneys, stenographers, etc. None of these folks can identify who appeared before the grand jury and what happened while they were there. But the rule expressly provides that no obligation of secrecy can be imposed on any person other than as set forth in the rule itself. As the website that Xoff relied on correctly explains, it does not apply to witnesses. It does not apply to people outside the process. So, the Journal Sentinel was perfectly free to identify a Travelgate grand jury witness in this morning's paper. If the Doyle administration knows which of its folks have testified (and it does), it wouldn't violate the grand jury secrecy rules by identifying them.