The Trump Justice Department has again failed to get a new indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James, with a grand jury declining Thursday to return charges, according to two sources familiar with the presentation.
The failure follows another grand jury rejection last Thursday and a dismissal the week before that of James’ charges on the grounds that the prosecutor behind them, Lindsey Halligan, was unlawfully appointed. The dismissal left open the opportunity to bring new charges with a lawful prosecutor.
In a statement, James’ lawyer Abbe Lowell said, “For the second time in seven days, the Department of Justice has failed in its clear attempt to fulfill President Trump’s political vendetta against Attorney General James.”
He said the “unprecedented rejection makes even clearer that this case should never have seen the light of day. Career prosecutors who knew better refused to bring it, and now two different grand juries in two different cities have refused to allow these baseless charges to be brought. In addition, a federal judge threw out the first indictment, pointing to the illegal appointment of a prosecutor put in place to carry out the President’s revenge. This case already has been a stain on this Department’s reputation and raises troubling questions about its integrity. Any further attempt to revive these discredited charges would be a mockery of our system of justice.”
A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment.
Historically, getting indictments from grand juries has not been a difficult task, given the relatively low bar that prosecutors must clear at that early stage of a criminal case. But this year has revealed a stunning pattern of grand jurors refusing to approve cases brought by the DOJ in Trump’s second term.
This isn’t the first case where the Trump DOJ has pressed forward despite grand jury resistance. In the case of Sidney Reid in Washington, the DOJ failed a whopping three times to obtain a felony indictment before reducing the case to a misdemeanor — and then losing that case at trial. A D.C. jury similarly acquitted sandwich thrower Sean Dunn of a misdemeanor after grand jurors declined to approve a felony indictment against him. The administration had said it would appeal the Nov. 24 ruling by U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie that rejected Halligan’s appointment and dismissed the charges against James and former FBI director James Comey. MS NOW previously reported on DOJ’s plan to seek another indictment of James, as well as the DOJ potentially seeking new charges against Comey, too. James pleaded not guilty in October to the since-dismissed bank fraud indictment obtained by Halligan. It alleged that James committed fraud and made false statements to a financial institution in connection with a mortgage she got on a Virginia home. It alleged that she obtained “total ill-gotten gains of approximately $18,933 over the life of the loan.” 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.
Carol Leonnig is a senior investigative reporter with MS NOW.
Ken Dilanian is the justice and intelligence correspondent for MS NOW.
Fallon Gallagher is a legal affairs reporter for MS NOW.
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