Since returning to the White House 16 months ago, President Donald Trump has used the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to target a long list of political foes. Some of them have been indicted on criminal charges by federal grand juries, including former FBI Director James Comey and ex-National Security Adviser John Bolton (who served in the first Trump Administration before being fired). But according to New York Times reporter Alan Feuer, the Trump DOJ is hitting a brick wall with grand juries in many cases.
"Grand juries are the heart of the criminal justice system, the inner sanctum where prosecutors, working unchecked and in secret, have enormous power to indict their fellow citizens," Feuer explains in the Times. "But under President Trump, the Justice Department has had serious difficulties presenting cases to grand juries, running into problems that would have seemed unthinkable a year ago. In the past several months, prosecutors have repeatedly failed to persuade grand juries that the cases they have brought warrant criminal charges. And if it were not unusual enough, they have also been admonished at least three times since last November by federal judges who have accused them of misconduct."
The Trump DOJ, Feuer notes, suffered a major "setback" when Judge April M. Perry in Chicago dismissed federal charges against four Democratic activists who were accused of impeding the police during an immigration-related protest. Perry was downright scathing with the dismissal, detailing what she viewed as egregious flaws in the case.
According to law professor and former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade — a frequent legal analyst for MS NOW — Perry's critique of grand jury transcripts is rare for a judge.
McQuade told the Times, "Courts almost never do that, mostly because they trust that the government is acting honestly. But if the (Justice) Department demonstrates that it isn't worthy of that trust, then it invites judges to look under the hood."
Legal experts, according to Feuer, believe that Trump is hurting DOJ's credibility by placing "inexperienced loyalists" in "senior roles."
"All of these examples of grand jury malfeasance come on top of the many cases in which Justice Department prosecutors have failed to get grand jurors to return indictments," Feuer reports. "Such failures — known as no true bills — used to be essentially unheard-of, given the amount of sway that prosecutors have in the grand jury room and the department's adherence to a tradition of seeking charges only in cases with strong evidence. But over the past year or so, there has been a flurry of no true bills in federal courts across the country."
Feuer adds, "Most have occurred in cities like Los Angeles and Washington, where grand jurors have rejected several cases involving people accused of protesting the administration's immigration crackdowns and surges in federal law enforcement."
