This is an opinion column.

When it comes to government secrecy, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall wants to have it one way in Washington and another way in Alabama. He doesn’t like what happens behind closed doors, except when he and his staff are the ones behind them.

Let’s start with the drama in the swamp.

Last week, Marshall tweeted praise and support for Sen. Lindsey Graham who, shortly before, had attacked the Trump impeachment inquiry for violating the president’s constitutional rights.

“One of the cornerstones of American jurisprudence is due process – the right to confront your accuser, call witnesses on your behalf, and challenge the accusations against you,” Graham said.

I’ll leave whether Graham is right or wrong for another day, but Marshall was clearly in agreement.

I praise Senator @LindseyGrahamSC and his cosponsors for introducing this resolution, which articulates everything wrong with the House’s impeachment investigation of President @realDonaldTrump.



The House should be using the Constitution—not the Star Chamber—as its lodestar. https://t.co/mzNl86Z1oZ — AG Steve Marshall (@AGSteveMarshall) October 25, 2019

“I praise Senator (Graham) and his cosponsors for introducing this resolution, which articulates everything wrong with the House’s impeachment investigation of President (Trump),” Marshall tweeted. “The House should be using the Constitution — not the Star Chamber — as its lodestar.”

Marshall’s stance on the inquiry, which has mimicked a grand jury investigation, is curious because in Alabama the attorney general has taken a very different stand. Here, Marshall has fought to preserve secrecy that differs mostly by how severely those who break it are punished.

Under Alabama’s Grand Jury Secrecy Act, anyone (other than prosecutors) who divulge what’s said behind the grand jury’s closed doors is guilty of a felony. Witnesses cannot disclose what a prosecutor asked. They cannot share their answers. Not even after an arrest, nor a conviction. Not ever.

In Alabama, unlike most other states and unlike the federal system, grand jury secrecy lasts forever.

Ed Henry, a former state lawmaker who testified before a grand jury investigating Mike Hubbard, wants to tell the world what he heard and what he said behind those doors, but the law won’t allow it.

So, he sued.

He sued Marshall and he sued the former prosecutor who summoned him to that grand jury room, Matt Hart. In federal court, his attorneys have argued that Alabama’s law is unconstitutional, and that federal precedents have already said so.

Nonetheless, Marshall’s office is fighting to keep Henry’s testimony secret. Unfortunately for open-government types, much of the court record in Henry’s lawsuit is, itself, sealed by the court.

It’s just secrets all the way down.

All rights have their limits, and there are good arguments for some degree of grand jury secrecy. It prevents witnesses from colluding. It protects informants. It stops potential defendants from intimidating witnesses or destroying evidence.

But secrecy years after the fact is much more difficult to defend. If Henry wants to talk, what’s the harm in him being able to talk?

Henry says that, if he could share what he knows, it wouldn’t look good for the Attorney General’s Office, and that’s why he was brought into the grand jury room in the first place — not to implicate Hubbard, but to cover up something for the prosecution.

“I was brought into the grand jury to shut me up,” he told me. “It was after the fact that I realized what had just happened. I could no longer discuss the things that I had been brought in to be questioned about, even though they had no bearing on the case the grand jury was hearing.”

Like what? Henry can’t say — because of the law.

His lawyer, William White, can’t either, but he did speak more generally.

“The way Alabama’s grand jury secrecy act is structured, it would protect a prosecutor or anyone else that engages in misconduct in the grand jury room,” White said.

A spokesman for Marshall declined to comment citing pending litigation.

Henry, who’s a Trump supporter, too, says Marshall is being inconsistent and unfair. Unfortunately for Henry, Marshall’s stance on government secrecy depends on which side of the closed door he’s on.

“Marshall needs to pick a side,” he said. “He either likes secrecy or he doesn’t.”

Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group.

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Alabama's attorney general, Steve Marshall, attacks secretive closed-door inquiries in DC, but in Alabama, he's defending one of the most restrictive grand jury secrecy laws in the country, free speech rights be damned. https://t.co/TqgaywDOlR — Kyle Whitmire (@WarOnDumb) November 1, 2019

More columns by Kyle Whitmire