Washington grand jurors have refused to indict in yet another criminal case — this time in a case in which the government alleged the defendant made threats against President Donald Trump. It’s the latest known instance of a stunning phenomenon that’s been underway in the nation’s capital, as grand jurors have refused to return indictments in several cases presented by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office.
I must reiterate once again how abnormal this is. Prosecutors generally have an easy time securing indictments — so easy that it’s difficult to infer much about a case’s merit based on the mere fact of an indictment.
There is much to infer, however, from grand jurors’ recent refusals to indict at least three other separate defendants who were all initially charged with assaulting law enforcement officers. In one of those cases alone, grand jurors declined three times to return an indictment.
Add to the mix the case of Nathalie Rose Jones. Announcing her arrest last month, Pirro said, “Threatening the life of the President is one of the most serious crimes and one that will be met with swift and unwavering prosecution. Make no mistake — justice will be served.”
Grand jurors may have thought they were doing just that — serving justice — as they have shown several times now that their view of that concept (or at least of the law) is different from the administration’s. 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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