President Donald Trump's alleged vengeance campaign against his political enemies has thus far flopped as his at times under-qualified loyalists fail to secure indictments, and new reports are emerging about the latest fiasco.
Federal prosecutors failed to persuade a single grand jury member that there was probable cause to indict six Democratic lawmakers who produced a video reminding military service members they were duty-bound to disobey unlawful orders, and The New Republic's Greg Sargent reported that even prosecutors weren't sure what law they might have broken.
"Here’s what happened: After the FBI communicated with the Democratic lawmakers, prosecutors in Pirro’s office reached out to them to follow up," Sargent wrote. "Slotkin’s attorney, Preet Bharara, directly asked prosecutors what statute the Democrats had allegedly violated to prompt the criminal inquiry, according to sources familiar with these discussions. The prosecutors could not name any statute, the sources told me."
“'What is the theory of criminal liability?' is the question that was posed to the prosecutors, one source said, adding that 'no answer was forthcoming.'"
Prosecutors went forward in their attempt to indict the members of Congress without naming any violated statute, and Sargent said that it still hasn't been definitively confirmed what statue they used in their ultimately doomed grand jury hearing.
"The failure to name a relevant statute when directly asked to do so by the lawyers for the accused suggests prosecutors didn’t think a criminal prosecution was warranted or doubted there was probable cause to think the Democrats had committed a crime," Sargent wrote. "In fact, one source familiar with these discussions tells me the prosecutors’ general tone in them suggested they were making the sort of inquiry that normally comes at the very outset of the investigative process."
One of the sources said that prosecutors – neither of whom had much prior experience – seemed to be at the "very preliminary" stage in their investigation when they presented their evidence to a grand jury, and Sargent said that's a worrisome sign.
"For the DOJ to seek an indictment so soon after conversations like those suggests something or other prompted the rush to indict, perhaps a word from on high that — let’s go way out on a limb here — had little to do with facts and law," he wrote. "Legal experts tell me it’s odd for prosecutors to fail to state any theory of criminal liability and then attempt an indictment anyway so quickly."
While this effort, like others before it, collapsed in clumsy defeat, Sargent warned that Trump would continue abusing his authority to punish his enemies.
"There’s always bad news in the Trump era [but] a dynamic has kicked in that is oddly helpful to him," Sargent wrote. "Thanks to the knee-slapping, comic-relief-inducing nature of these failures, the authoritarian abuses underlying them risk being seen as less threatening than they actually are. That could potentially disarm us for the next round, which will surely come."
