Today is Wednesday, February 22, 2023. Everyone is talking about that interview with the Georgia grand jury foreperson last night that aired on major news outlets in which the young lady cagily teased certain conclusions reached by the special grand jury that was empaneled from May 2022 through January 2023 to help Fulton County, Georgia, prosecutors investigate the former president. To my knowledge, this interview that aired on MSNBC last night while I was typing my blog is unprecedented, but as it appears in Georgia jurisprudence, there’s nothing that says that special grand juries need to be secret. Kohrs has indicated that the judge gave her and the other jurors permission to speak to the press, albeit with limitations, and boy, did she speak. During the entire interview, it appeared that this 30 year-old was tickled pink in getting her 15 minutes of fame. An analysis by Zachary B. Wolf for CNN politics details the extent of the interview in his piece entitled “One of the ‘random people’ chosen to investigate Trump goes public.”

It’s important to note here that prosecutors will make the ultimate decision whether to indict the former president and other allies of his – not the special grand jury on which Kohrs served and that heard from witnesses and prepared a report and recommendations.

In the interview, Kohrs cagily answers questions about the recommendations the panel might have made, however teasing that the special panel might have recommended charges for Dumpf and saying she hopes something comes of it all. Her identity as the foreperson was first revealed by The Associated Press, and in addition to the AP, she has, in short order, done interviews with The New York Times, NBC News, the Atlanta–Journal Constitution, and CNN. My, has she been very active in such a short span of time. She is putting in her 15 minutes of fame to good use here.

One critic of her interview, former U.S. attorney Harry Litman said on CNN today that prosecutors have got to be “consternated” that a potential jury pool could be contaminated by Kohrs’ “odd 15-minute PR tour.”

“Anthony Michael Kreis, an assistant professor of law at Georgia State University, told CNN’s Sara Murray that while Kohrs’ media tour was unusual – particularly in a case where no one has yet faced charges – Kohrs was within her rights to discuss the case as long as she didn’t delve into grand jury deliberations.”

Kreis comes to Kohrs’ defense, saying, “She didn’t do anything violative of her obligations. I don’t think she did anything that jeopardized Fani Willis’ strategy or her ability to bring her case.”

Who really cares that a three-time loser desperate to be in the limelight after suffering too many setbacks to mention here visited East Palestine, Ohio, today where a Norfolk Southern-owned train transporting carcinogenic chemicals derailed on February 3, prompting a mass evacuation and release of pollutants? Critics accurately highlighted this Orange Fiend’s administration’s real role in making the fiery crash and its toxic aftermath more likely. I won’t mention the pathological liar’s speech in this poor rural town of about 4,700 people located a few miles west of the Pennsylvania border.

Just know that it was the Dumpf administration that gutted train safety rules at the behest of railroad industry lobbyists that was instrumental in creating the conditions for the derailment and ensuing chemical spill and burnoff, which has provoked fears of groundwater contamination and air pollution. These details are found in a Raw Story article by Kenny Stancil entitled “Trump hit with backlash over East Palestine visit: ‘He should be apologizing.'”

Progressive stalwart Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator, said it best: “He should be apologizing to that community for his administration rolling back rail regulations.”

In an opinion piece published earlier this week, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch made a similar point. He said, “If residents of East Palestine – a modern news desert of downsized or disappeared news sources, which allows misinformation to fester – truly knew the reality, a delegation of townsfolk would likely greet Trump with tiki torches and pitchforks.” Too bad he wasn’t met with such a delegation. Bunch then compares the former president’s visit to “the tendency of a criminal to return to the scene of his crime.”

Bunch accurately noted that Dumpf was in office for less than a year when he moved to kill the 2015 rule change initiated by the Obama administration that would have required freight trains to upgrade the current braking technology that was developed in the 19th century for state-of-the-art electronic systems. This move came after Norfolk Southern and other rail carriers donated more than $6 million to Republican candidates in 2016 and spent millions more on lobbying.

So enough of this clown’s political stunt in Ohio. He would have not been missed anyway if he had stayed at Mar-a-Lago where he belongs. Actually, he belongs in a tiny cell, come to think of it.

Stay safe and be well.