The Department of Justice is increasingly being accused of misconduct in grand jury proceedings thanks to President Donald Trump’s retribution campaigns and his inexperienced U.S. attorney appointees.
The president’s push for revenge has led to high-profile legal failures, with the DOJ trying and failing last year to secure indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
The DOJ, however, has continued to pursue charges against Comey, while also targeting lower-level Trump adversaries, such as protesters who oppose his immigration crackdown, even when the cases are weak.
A combination of political meddling and novice prosecutors leading U.S. Attorney’s offices has led to both juries and judges losing faith in the grand jury system, which has long served as the bedrock of U.S. criminal law, according to a new report from The New York Times.
Grand juries are failing to return indictments at an unprecedented rate, and judges have admonished DOJ lawyers at least three times since November for grand jury misconduct, the Times found.
Previously, these events were so rare that statistics have never been collected on their frequency.
In a case in Chicago involving four anti-ICE protesters, a judge asked for full grand jury transcripts over concerns that the lead prosecutor was using redactions to try to hide DOJ misconduct.
Barbara L. McQuade, the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan who spent 20 years with the DOJ, said she had never even heard of a judge requesting a full transcript.
“Courts almost never do that, mostly because they trust that the government is acting honestly,” she told the Times. “But if the department demonstrates that it isn’t worthy of that trust, then it invites judges to look under the hood.”
The judge dismissed the charges last week after discovering prosecutors had spoken to the jurors outside the grand jury room, improperly coached them on the evidence presented, and removed grand jurors who voted against an earlier version of the charges, the Times reported.
“Your sole goal is to do justice. Your client is justice itself,” Judge April Perry told Andrew S. Boutros, a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney.
“I do believe deeply in the presumption of regularity and that most government attorneys are doing the best they can to do the right thing,” Perry added. “That trust has been broken.”
In Wyoming, a panel of three federal judges threw out nine indictments—including murder charges—after Trump’s top prosecutor Darin Smith made inappropriate comments to the grand jury, including handing out his business card and telling them to reach out.
Smith, a former state senator and executive at the Christian Broadcasting Network, had no prior prosecutorial experience when Trump appointed him to lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Wyoming.
In a statement to the Daily Beast, a DOJ spokesperson accused the Times of focusing on “a few isolated events to continue their fruitless pursuit against Trump” and said the cases were “not representative of DOJ’s overall achievements to date.”
“We will not be deterred in our efforts to hold criminals accountable and keep the American people safe,” spokesperson Natalie Badassare said.
The Daily Beast has also reached out to the DOJ for comment.
Outside of grand juries, federal judges have ruled thousands of times against Trump’s deportation tactics; dismissed criminal charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia—an immigrant who had been wrongfully deported to El Salvador—citing prosecutorial abuse of power; and ripped into the DOJ for its “appalling” and “reckless” lack of candor.
