Attempts by the Department of Justice to prosecute Americans who are balking at Donald Trump’s authoritarian impulses are not finding a friendly audience when cases are being presented before grand juries long considered to be prosecutor-friendly.
According to Alan Feuer, writing for The New York Times, the U.S. Attorneys appointed by Trump and working under the supervision of Attorney General Pam Bondi are finding it rough sledding getting grand juries to return a true bill that would set the stage to proceed to the courtroom –– and there is a reason for that.
As Feur is reporting, “In what could be read as a citizens’ revolt, ordinary people serving on grand juries have repeatedly refused in recent days to indict their fellow residents who became entangled in either the president’s immigration crackdown or his more recent show of force.”
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Noting that seven prominent cases have already been stymied by grand juries, he admitted there is no way to know what transpired in grand jury deliberations; nonetheless, a trend is becoming very apparent.
According to former U.S. S Attorney Barbara McQuade, what is happening during Bondi’s tenure — both the aggressiveness of the prosecutions as well as the frequency of failures to get a true bill –- is extraordinary.
“First of all, it is exceedingly rare for any grand jury to reject a proposed indictment because ordinarily prosecutors use discretion in only bringing cases that are strong and advance the interests of justice. I have seen this maybe once or twice in my career of 20 years, but this is something different,” the popular cable TV legal analyst offered.
“My guess is that these grand jurors are seeing prosecutorial overreach and they don’t want to be part of it,” she suggested.
The Trump administration’s efforts are also being stymied by judges who are growing weary of being led astray by the DOJ prosecutors.
“The erosion of this trust — known in legal parlance as the presumption of regularity — has been widespread in the many civil cases challenging Mr. Trump’s political agenda, where judges have repeatedly accused Justice Department lawyers of misleading them or violating their orders,” Feuer wrote before adding, “But now the phenomenon has started to crop up in criminal cases, too.”
According to federal Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui, who is in a pitched battle with controversial U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro over multiple cases that have been shot down by grand juries, “Blind deference to the government. That is no longer a thing. Trust that has been earned over generations has been lost in weeks.”
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