Walls closing in?

He escaped the presidency having been impeached twice though not removed from office, but Donald Trump may yet be held accountable for something. Manhattan prosecutors have convened a special grand jury in their investigation of the ex-president and his company, the Trump Organization, signaling that the office is moving into a more serious phase of its multiyear investigation.

• — Double dipping. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.'s investigation has centered around financial dealings at several properties before Trump became president. Vance has said the office is investigating possible bank, tax, and insurance fraud.
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• — Jury duty. The latest development signals that the office is seeking indictments of the Trump Organization and its officers, former prosecutors said. Special grand juries typically sit for at least several months, compared with regular grand juries that are impaneled for a month.
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• — Yada yada yada. Trump said in a statement yesterday that the investigations by both Vance and New York Attorney General Letitia James are purely political. "This is a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in American history," he said. "Our Country is broken." —The Wall Street Journal

Katyal: The DOJ should release Bill Barr's memo

"In the end, there must be a zone of confidential government decision-making and privacy. Good government depends on it. But that zone is a two-way street: It also depends on government officials who behave as if they deserve to be there. The Justice Department's decision to appeal Judge Jackson's order treated this case like any other garden-variety case. It wasn't." —Neal Katyal in The New York Times

Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general of the U.S. and the co-author of "Impeach: The Case Against Donald Trump," is a professor at Georgetown Law School.

MORE: The secret memo Bill Barr used to clear Trump of obstruction of justice, and why the Biden DOJ wants to keep it under wraps —Insider

From Arizona to Georgia...

In Georgia's Fulton County, an audit of ballots from the 2020 presidential election is moving forward after a judge on Friday green-lit the unsealing of 147,000 mail-in ballots. The new audit follows three prior audits, including a laborious hand recount, conducted last year, that found no evidence of fraud. Georgia elections official Gabriel Sterling has said that the audit is being spurred by Trump supporters, who filed suit to gain access to Fulton County's ballots. However, Sterling says Georgia's audit will be much more highly regulated than the opaquely operated Arizona audit currently underway, which he said is not "an actual audit" and is being conducted by inexperienced people hoping to find fraud. —CNN

MORE: He fought Trump's 2020 lies. He also backs new scrutiny of ballots —The New York Times

An interesting development in NYC

New York City's new ranked-choice voting system, which allows voters in special and primary elections to select up to five preferred candidates in each race, has prompted two competitors in the city's mayoral race to cross-endorse one another. Businessman Art Chang and entrepreneur Joycelyn Taylor want voters to rank them, but also to put the other on their ballot. They're opting for coalition instead of competition, they say, because they share similar values. "There is a unique opportunity that ranked-choice voting brings," said Taylor. "It's an opportunity to collaborate." —City Limits

MORE: New York City mayoral primary offers major test for ranked-choice voting —CBS News

Smith: Diversity is the cure for disinformation

"If the intent of malign foreign influence is disruption, then countermeasures should focus on building trust and developing mutual understanding across diverse groups to build a shared reality. Building trust is complicated—and even more so in the current era of endemic misinformation and disinformation often connected to foreign manipulation. Unlike other foreign threats, misinformation and disinformation constitute an epistemic threat to what the American public believes is real. Knowledge is socially distributed—not individually constructed—and over the last few decades, the institutions that help Americans define what is real and what is true have been steadily eroded, creating a vulnerability that U.S. adversaries are quick to exploit." —Maggie Smith on War on the Rocks

Maggie Smith is a U.S. Army captain currently assigned to the Army Cyber Institute at the U.S. Military Academy, where she is a scientific researcher and an assistant professor in the Department of Social Science.

This week on the Hill

A pair of moderate Senate Democrats pleaded with Republicans yesterday to drop their opposition to creating an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema called the formation of such an inquiry "a critical step to ensuring our nation never has to endure an attack at the hands of our countrymen again." So far, Sens. Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski have indicated support for the commission, while Sens. Susan Collins, Bill Cassidy, and Pat Toomey want to tweak the legislation. —The New York Times

• — Filibuster. Manchin, a steadfast supporter of the Senate filibuster, said yesterday that he will remain committed to it, even if Republicans use it to block the Jan. 6 commission he supports. Sinema is also opposed to filibuster reform, and both of their votes would be needed by Democrats to do away with the controversial procedure. —Forbes
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• — Infrastructure. Republican senators will announce a new counteroffer on infrastructure tomorrow, in response to the White House's slimmed-down alternative to President Biden's original proposal. The new offer will cost close to $1 trillion—the minimum amount that Biden has said he will accept for an infrastructure bill—and would be paid for by repurposing unused funds from previously approved coronavirus relief measures. —CBS News
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• — Pandemic. Meanwhile, the heads of the six largest U.S. banks—JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America—are testifying before the Senate Banking Committee today on the financial institutions' response to the coronavirus pandemic. They likely will face conflicting pressures from Democrats seeking action on racial disparities in lending and Republicans who say banks should avoid taking positions on social issues. —The Wall Street Journal

Kaplan: America needs a realistic commitment to human rights

"A foreign policy dominated completely by human rights would be unsustainable, forcing the U.S. to abandon core national interests—such as keeping the peace with other nuclear powers—and dragging senior policymakers into one humanitarian crisis after another. A policy that virtually ignored human rights, however, would reduce the U.S. to the one-dimensional realpolitik that characterizes Chinese and Russian behavior. A concern for human rights is what differentiates the U.S. from others as a great power." —Robert Kaplan on Project Syndicate

Robert Kaplan is chair in geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is the author of 19 books, most recently, "The Good American: The Epic Life of Bob Gersony, the U.S. Government's Greatest Humanitarian."

MORE: China and Russia once again pledge to strengthen ties as White House announces first Putin-Biden summit —South China Morning Post

Dr. David G.'s right on the money. Republicans are killing themselves as a party. Who will be the first ones Trump blames when his legal problems truly slam him against a crumbling wall? —Donna C., California

Over the past few years, I've been increasingly convinced that we are long overdue for some Amendments to our constitution.

I am wondering if it would be worthwhile to consider the following changes:

1. A president who is successfully impeached by the House but not convicted by the Senate may complete their current term, but is disqualified from running for a second term. It is not a good idea to have someone run a second time who has so divided the nation that the House votes to impeach them...especially if they've been impeached twice.

2. Reasonable term limits should be instituted for congressional members and Supreme Court justices to deter cronyism and to bring in fresh perspectives. The terms should be long enough for the individuals to add value, but not so long that they become entrenched in an unbalanced power structure.

3. This may not be feasible, but there needs to be more separation between the executive branch and the legislative branch, similar to the level of separation that currently exists between the judicial branch and the other branches at nearly all levels of government. It is time to give consideration that perhaps our country would be best served by a president and vice president who are not directly associated with any particular political party. The president should ideally be a leader to promote collaboration and unity, but when a president is completely beholden to a specific party or when a given party is completely beholden to the president (or to a particular person who was previously president), then our country is at great risk if that president and the associated political party is or has become corrupted. This would essentially be a requirement that anyone who runs for president (and their vice president) must be an independent who is completely separated from any existing party. It would also relegate the notion of political parties to the legislative branch only and completely eliminate presidential primaries. It would also give that president flexibility in choosing Cabinet members that are not tied to any one party, hopefully opening up their options for the best candidates overall.

4. This one would also be a stretch, but perhaps we should also consider funding presidential candidates solely from tax dollars with some kind of system in place to limit the number of candidates based on some factors TBD. Only those ads funded by the tax dollars could be advertised and endorsed as official. Other entities that wish to advertise for a given candidate could do so (freedom of speech), but those ads must explicitly state that they are not official and not endorsed by the candidate. —Steven R., California

The views expressed in "What's Your Take?" are submitted by readers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff or the Stand Up Republic Foundation.