Tanawah Downing Jessica Saxton Davenport City Council June 25.2025 Facebook Video Screenshot
Engaging our local county grand juries is a critical tool for the people to hold public officials accountable. Last issue, I wrote about how after more than 10 years of having access to our local Scott County grand jury, the county court administrator, the county attorney, and the Iowa attorney general's state courts' counsel have collaborated to reverse such public access claiming that the identities of our local county grand jury are now confidential. This impasse will undoubtedly only be resolved with litigation that will eventually go to the Iowa Supreme Court.
One item I failed to include in last month's edition on this topic was the language found at the top of each juror's Qualifications Questionnaire. It reads: “Under Iowa Law, a completed jury questionnaire is a public record unless the court has ordered the questionnaire sealed for security or privacy reasons. Because a completed questionnaire is a public record, any person may view your questionnaire or obtain a copy of it from the Clerk of the Court's office with limited redactions consistent with Iowa law.”
I am not aware of any court order that sealed the questionnaires of the once yearly seated Scott County Grand Jury. Nor was such an order referenced when I was told the public no longer can access the grand jury.
Who Are Tanawah Downing & Jessica Saxton?
On the Wednesday evening of June 25, 2025, I got a text from a concerned citizen alerting me to the video of that evening's Davenport City Council meeting. Two people made presentations to the council about accessing the grand jury and did I know these people? Of course, I was glued to the playback of the council meeting that evening. After watching the video playback several times, my “Spidey-Sense” was tingling. I thought, “Is this crazy-bait? Are these people legitimate or have they been sent here to disrupt or discredit the critical discussion regarding the grand juries?”
Publisher's Suplemental Note: The video playback of the entire Davenport City Council meeting on June 25, 2025 was previously available at this link here: https://davenportia.portal.civicclerk.com/event/3933/media.
As recent as July 3, 2025 this page displays the text "There is no video for this Event." Sourcing a handful of prior city council meetings on the calendar also produce the same "no video" for that meeting avaialble. The two who spoke that are the subject of this article posted the excerpt from the full meeting of their presentation at their Facebook page, available at this link here: www.rcreader.com/y/tanawah.
I have personally experienced two occasions in which an interloper ingratiated and inserted themselves into a core group of local activists working on creating awareness and meaningful change. After gaining our trust, these saboteurs created drama, disruption, and eventually took actions that cast negative light on the efforts, marginalizing the missions and discrediting the arguments. When you are over the target, the adversary will do what it takes to quietly destroy your efforts from within.
I had to know if these two presenters, detailed below, were crazy-bait or not. Subsequently, I interviewed Tanawah Downing last Saturday morning, and the full audio recording of that interview is available here or RCReader.com/podcast. Tanawah and his partner Jessica dutifully worked with me to provide documentation about the claims they had made at the council meeting and in our interview. Not all of the documentation he cited at the city council meeting and in our interview (e.g. Notice "served" to the Iowa Attorney General) was forthcoming.
Relevant documentation Jessica Saxton shared with the Reader has been posted below.
I've determined that their efforts are sincere, especially given one can view dozens of videos of the two presenting to other city councils nationwide. And the two have attempted to “serve” each state's attorney general and state supreme court justices as evidenced by this video in Iowa: Rumble.com/v4toba6-iowa-you-have-been-served.html.
Unfortunately, finding two state troopers at the state capital in the dead of night and handing them a hand-written notice on the cover of a folder with an affidavit inside and expecting that notice to reach the Attorney General is misguided. Further, I was fascinated by Tanawah's mission. Who knew that the Washington State Constitution outlawed grand juries from convening in the counties?! Let's not give our legislators any such new ideas. In 1857, Iowa already amended the state constitution to read: “ … or the General Assembly may provide for holding persons to answer for any criminal offense without intervention of a grand jury. - The Constitution of the State of Iowa (1857), Bill of Rights, Article I, Section 11, When indictment necessary - grand jury.” So what gives? I reached out to one of our contributing writers who specializes in legal and court case research to look into this for us and her response is printed below. As I told Jessica, any critique we may provide is in the spirit of strengthening the argument for grand jury engagement.
Arresting People in Davenport Without a Grand Jury Indictment
On 25 June 2025, Mr. Tanawah Downing and Ms. Jessica Saxton appeared before the Davenport City during the Public With Business portion of the agenda. (Find that video here: RCReader.com/y/tanawah) Saxton spoke first and introduced herself as a “civil rights advocate and litigator” from Washington, D.C. She stated she was providing the city council a public notice in accordance with unspecified U.S.C. Rules and Supreme Court Rules 17 and 20. She provided a reminder that the United States Constitution is Supreme Law, then referred to Clause 1 of the 5th Amendment: “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury.” She asserted that Iowa has passed legislation unconstitutionally to permit prosecuting attorneys and police officers to charge by way of information rather than by grand jury indictment. She also asserted that an emolument violation is when public officials are paid to commit a crime. This is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution's Article I Section 10 proscribing that no state shall pass a law impairing the obligations of contracts. Police officers, prosecutors, judges are all under contract via their oaths of office and when the state passes a law directing its agents make arrests that should require a grand jury indictment by point of information instead, this is violation of said contract.
Saxton also cited a violation of the 14th Amendment, claiming that the Bill of Rights cannot be impaired, implying that Iowa is impairing immunity and privileges of United States citizens particularly the 5th Amendment. She asserted that the city council is paying people to disobey the law. Saxton stated that “Tanawah Downing is preparing to litigate this issue at the U.S. supreme court on behalf of more than 700,000 prisoners.” Saxton stated she was providing the city council notice that if they continue to pay officials to break the law by arresting citizens for a crime that requires a grand jury indictment via the unlawful workaround of “point of information,” that there can be criminal sanctions that come with such continued unlawful behavior.
Tanawah Downing also introduced himself as a “national civil rights advocate and litigator,” and requested the council to review the 5th Amendment to confirm what Ms. Saxton had shared was accurate and to instruct the council's agents to comply with the U.S. Constitution regarding the 5th Amendment and grand juries. He went on to state, “As of this moment, we have already served your Attorney General … and your Iowa Supreme Court justices.” Further these 5th Amendment violations are a crime because when a public official relies on an inferior state statute to deprive a person of their constitutionally guaranteed rights they are in violation of Title 18 USC 242 Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law. Downing implores the Davenport city council to please work together to rectify these wrongs and avoid any further litigation. Lastly, Downing stated, “We have gotten word back from Kash Patel (FBI Director) and has agreed that any time a state judge chooses to violate a federal law they are subject to arrest.”
See also Lydia Electrum's "Erroneous Efforts to a Worthy Cause."
