One of the most remarkable stories of President Donald Trump’s second term is the series of cases in which grand juries have declined to approve felony indictments presented by the Justice Department. Even one such rejection is rare, but they’ve been piling up this year in cases alleging assaults on federal officers in connection with the administration’s immigration enforcement.
A new example comes from Chicago, where a federal magistrate judge on Wednesday granted the DOJ’s motion to dismiss charges against comedy club manager Nathan Griffin. The government had accused him of assaulting an agent in October. According to the now-dismissed complaint, Griffin had tried to close a car door on an agent and later said, “I didn’t assault anybody. … Shutting a door isn’t a f—ing crime.”
The grand jury seemed to agree. The judge’s order noted that the government’s dismissal motion was prompted by the grand jury’s refusal to indict Griffin.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported that now “at least three people who have faced federal charges tied to Operation Midway Blitz have been cleared by grand jurors,” with charges dropped against 13 people overall and no cases having led to convictions.
The Chicago news follows yet another failed DOJ outing last week in Virginia, where a grand jury rejected the government’s attempt to revive fraud charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James. Her initial charges were dismissed, along with former FBI Director James Comey’s, because the Trump-installed prosecutor in that Virginia district was illegally appointed.
The DOJ has been pushing forward in the face of grand jury rejections. In the case of Sidney Reid, for example, federal prosecutors struck out in the Washington, D.C., grand jury a whopping three times before reducing the case to a misdemeanor — which doesn’t require grand jury approval — and then losing that case at trial. So, whether it’s in D.C., Chicago or elsewhere, expect this extraordinary story to continue as long as the government keeps overreaching in the eyes of its citizens. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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