Rare special grand jury convened after Trump-Pirro clash

A special grand jury is being put together in Washington, D.C., by the US Justice Department.

A grand jury is a group of 23 people who decide if there is enough evidence to think someone might have broken the law.

A lawyer named Steven Vandervelden, a close friend of the top prosecutor Jeanine Pirro, will help lead this jury.

Right now, nobody knows exactly what the jury will be looking into.

The timing stands out because it comes just two weeks after Pirro dropped charges against a former Olympian accused of damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

The president, Donald Trump, was very upset about that decision and even suggested Pirro might lose her job.

This special kind of jury has an extra power: even without enough evidence for charges, it can write a report saying it believes someone did something wrong.

Anyone named in such a report gets a chance to testify and bring witnesses to defend themselves.

Some people are wondering whether the jury might investigate cases from Pirro's office that have caused a lot of controversy.

But until the Justice Department says more, the jury's real purpose remains a mystery.