Name:   MartiniMan - Subject:   This is how it works with these things Date:   10/30/2017 1:20:59 PM

I am not positive but as I understand it Grand Juries are not selected by a prosecutor but are sitting there waiting for prosecutors to make a case for indictment.  They are convened by a court jurisdiction and will hear any case brought before them.  Needless to say, a Grand Jury in DC or northern VA will likely lean liberal.  But the fact is, as Tom Wolfe wrote in Bonfire of the Vanities, a grand jury could indict a ham sandwich.  There is a very low bar for an indictment, basically all they need is probable cause that a crime has been committed.  

An indictment of Manafort has long been in the works when they raided his home and probably indicates that their attempts to turn him were not successful.  The one to worry about in this mess is not Manafort but Papadopolous, who plead guilty to lying to the FBI.  That smells of him rolling over in exchange for a lesser sentence.  They indicted Manafort to turn up the pressure on him.  So they have gotten two short timers in the Trump campaign, one for perjury and the other for financial crimes unrelated to his short tenure with the Trump campaign.  What Mueller can get from these two remains to be seen and it could end there depending on what they say.