Welcome To The Resistance… Grand Juries?

from the getting-back-to-why-they-even-exist dept

The DOJ can’t indict a ham sandwich these days. That old saying doesn’t ring as true as it used to now that most of the DOJ’s work is just vindictive prosecutions.

It’s not just cases being tossed because DOJ prosecutors weren’t legally appointed to their positions. This dates back to the early parts of last year when the DOJ was trying to turn anti-ICE protesters into convicted felons. Most notoriously, the government failed to secure an assault indictment against Sean Dunn, a DC resident who famously “assaulted” an ICE officer by throwing a literal sandwich at them.

Former Trump personal lawyer Lindsey Halligan did manage to secure indictments (after multiple attempts) against former FBI director James Comey and current New York Attorney General Letitia James. Those case are gone but not because the grand juries rebelled, but because the “rule of law” party ignored a lot of rules and laws.

But the trend that began last year continues: federal prosecutors are seeing their cases rejected by grand juries at historically high rates.

In 2016, the most recent year for which the Justice Department has published data, federal prosecutors concluded more than 155,000 prosecutions and declined over 25,000 cases presented by investigators. In only six instances was a grand jury’s refusal to indict listed as the reason for dropping the matter.

Lindsey Halligan managed to rack up nearly half that amount in a single case:

A grand jury rejected one of three charges Halligan proposed against Comey. She initially secured an indictment against James, but after a judge threw that case out , two grand juries voted down new indictments.

She did this twice with the same proposed defendant. The DOJ surpassed this number of rejections less than halfway through 2025, as grand juries not only rejected the vindictive prosecution of the DC sandwich thrower, but dozens of other cases brought by prosecutors.

At one point earlier this year, [DOJ US Attorney Bill] Essayli’s office had managed to secure indictments in less than a quarter of the felony cases it brought in connection with protests or immigration raids, the Los Angeles Times reported.

We’ve spent plenty of time criticizing grand juries here at Techdirt. But something weird and quietly wonderful is happening all over the nation, which is returning grand juries back to their roots: a crucial part of the system of checks and balances.

They’re a carryover from the British Empire, but one the founding fathers felt actually had some merit, as former federal prosecutor Randall Eliason explained in post last year discussing the DOJ’s multiple failures:

The Constitution requires that every federal felony be indicted by a grand jury. This safeguard was inherited from the British legal system, where it dates back to the Magna Carta in the 13th century. To prevent the king from arbitrarily locking up people for improper reasons, British law required the Crown to present its evidence to a panel of residents of the local community to establish that criminal charges were justified. The case could only proceed if that group of citizens, the grand jury, approved the charges.

We’re dealing with a president who thinks he’s a king. And his DOJ is finding out that regular Americans not only don’t view him as a king, but aren’t willing to rubber stamp a bunch of vindictive prosecutions meant to remind citizens who’s in power.

Halligan went 1-for-3 in her attempted prosecution of James Comey. Former Fox commentator Jeanine Pirro did even worse when trying to prosecute an anti-ICE protester for assault.

Pirro’s office presented these facts to a D.C. federal grand jury and asked them to indict Reid for assaulting, resisting, or impeding a federal officer, a felony punishable by up to eight years in prison. When the grand jury refused, prosecutors tried again with a second grand jury. And then with a third. Each grand jury refused to return the indictment sought by prosecutors.

Now that this sort of thing is almost a daily occurrence, Trump loyalists like Pirro are blaming their inability to secure indictments on the public, rather than their own inability to read the room and discard felony charges jury members don’t seem to believe are warranted. That’s part of the reason why so many indictments are returned by grand juries: prosecutors who actually know what they’re doing (rather than the stunt casting that passes for federal agency appointments under Trump) will ditch cases that seem doomed to be rejected by grand jurors.

No one in the administration will learn anything from this. Bill Essayli will continue to scream at his underlings for failing to turn vindictive bullshit into prison sentences. Lindsey Halligan will continue to bumblefuck her way into an eventual firing for failing to fulfill Trump’s revenge fantasies. And other under-qualified former Fox b-listers will return to their former employer to complain their losses are just more evidence of a latent strain of liberalism that’s making America less great again.

“There are a lot of people who sit on juries and and they live in Georgetown or in Northwest or in some of these better areas, and they don’t see the reality of crime that is occurring,” Pirro said in August on “Fox News Sunday.”

Pirro also blamed that alleged indifference to crime for a grand jury’s refusal to indict Justice Department paralegal Sean Dunn for throwing a Subway sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection agent during a street confrontation earlier that month.

“The grand jurors don’t take it so seriously. They’re like, ‘Eh, you know, whatever.’ My job is to try to turn that around,” Pirro said. 

Like many people in Trump’s orbit, Pirro is so divorced from reality she should be cutting it alimony checks every month. The grand juries are taking it seriously. It’s the DOJ prosecutors that are being glib, treating every ridiculous case like a foregone conclusion as they try to convert Trump’s desire for vengeance into criminal charges. Say what you will about grand juries, but it appears jurors aren’t willing to help the government strip people of their freedom just because it’s angry.

Filed Under: bill essayli, doj, grand juries, indictments, lindsey halligan, pam bondi, trump administration, vindictive prosecution