'Keeps tripping up': Why Trump's campaign of retribution has hit a brick wall

14 August

U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 14, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Even though President Donald Trump has managed to fill the Department of Justice with political loyalists, he's so far found it difficult to unleash the campaign of retribution he ran on in 2024.

That's according to a Thursday article in the Atlantic by author Quinta Jurecic, who delved into the numerous ways the president's attempts to prosecute his political enemies have fallen flat despite his best efforts. Jurecic explained that while Trump has prosecutors on his side, those prosecutors still have to convince a grand jury to indict, and for a jury to convict the people charged, which has lately proven difficult for the administration despite its inherent advantages.

"These are far from insurmountable barriers; on the contrary, as criminal-justice reformers have long argued, the deck is stacked in favor of the prosecution," Jurecic wrote. "But the Trump administration keeps tripping up on them anyway."

In Los Angeles, for example, the Trump administration filed 35 felony charges against people who were protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). However, prosecutors were unable to convince a grand jury to indict defendants in several cases. Eight of those 35 charges were eventually dismissed, while another five were refiled as misdemeanors. When comparing these numbers to 2016 — the last year in which full federal data is available — Jurecic found that only six grand juries refused to indict out of more than 180,000 charges filed.

Jurecic also pointed to the DOJ's failed prosecution of Newark, New Jersey mayor Ras Baraka, who was initially charged in May with felonies while attempting to conduct oversight of an immigrant detention center before charges were eventually dropped. And she noted that Attorney General Pam Bondi has so far failed to make headway on efforts to prove that former DOJ special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation on Russian election inference was a "hoax." In addition to a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report finding that Russia did indeed attempt to influence the election to help Trump, any charges would be unlikely to stick, given that the statute of limitations for any relevant charges has likely already passed.

Additionally, the Trump DOJ's attempt to punish former special counsel Jack Smith for his 2024 criminal prosecutions of Trump's alleged election interference and alleged mishandling of classified documents is unlikely to go anywhere. The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) — which is separate from the DOJ — is conducting a Hatch Act investigation into Smith based on a complaint from Sen. Tom cotton (R-Ark.) But the only penalty available for the OSC to levy is firing a government official, and Smith already resigned from his role. Jurecic argued that even as Trump commands vast resources to make life more difficult for his political opponents, actually jailing them is a much more difficult task.

"A jury is in essence a democratic institution, requiring citizens to exercise their judgment in a model of shared deliberation that is at odds with Trump’s autocratic tendencies," she wrote. "... So far, the system has held up against Trump’s encroachment. But the rapid erosion of democratic life in the United States over the past six months is a reminder of how quickly things can change."

Click here to read Jurecic's full article in the Atlantic (subscription required).

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