Not even one of the grand jurors who heard the Trump administration's case against six Democratic lawmakers believed they should be charged over a video reminding military service members or their constitutional oath.
Prosecutors Steven Vandervelden and Carlton Davis – both appointed by U.S. attorney Jeanine Pirro – failed to persuade a single grand juror in the District of Columbia they had met the low threshold of probable cause in the case, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.
"It’s exceedingly rare for a federal grand jury to reject prosecutors’ attempts to secure an indictment, since the process is stacked in the government’s favor," the network reported. "Federal grand juries need a minimum of 16 members to have a quorum, and they max out at 23 members. Just 12 grand jurors need to agree that the government had probable cause to indict, a threshold much lower than the unanimous 'beyond a reasonable doubt' standard that a petit jury needs to convict."
"The vast majority of assistant U.S. attorneys will go their entire careers without being rejected by a grand jury like this," the report added.
Neither of the assistant U.S. attorneys assigned to the case had any prior federal prosecution experience, so they accomplished that rare and ignominious feat with remarkable speed, according to legal experts.
"I'm a county-level prosecutor," said Jonah Buck, a deputy district attorney from Oregon. "It's spectacularly difficult to sway ZERO grand jurors to your position. I'm not typically one to dunk on fellow attorneys, but this is some 'sobbing toddler watches their balloon drift into the clouds' level of legal skill. I'm absolutely fascinated by this."
Vandervelden worked as a local prosecutor during the 1990s in Westchester County, New York, where Pirro served as district attorney, but now operates a dance photography business. He confirmed to Bloomberg Law that he had updated his studio's Instagram page hours before the stunning defeat.
Davis previously served as a staffer for House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY), and both he and Vandervelden were both brought into the inner circle of Pirro, a former Fox News broadcaster, as she launched investigations of President Donald Trump's political enemies.
"The D.C. office’s public corruption team has a long history of investigating members of Congress, but was walled off from the investigation into the six Democrats, which include Sens. Mark Kelly (AZ) and Elissa Slotkin (MI), said the two people with knowledge of the matter," Bloomberg reported.
"Charges against sitting lawmakers also would typically require a series of approvals and consultations with DOJ’s public integrity section," the report added. "But that office has been gutted over the past year and it’s not clear if the few lawyers remaining had any window into this indictment effort."