Grand jury rejects Trump attempt to indict members of Congress

Alan Feuer, Glenn Thrush & Michael S. Schmidt, NY Times - Federal prosecutors in Washington sought and failed on Tuesday to secure an indictment against six Democratic lawmakers who posted a video this fall that enraged President Trump by reminding active-duty members of the military and intelligence community that they were obligated to refuse illegal orders, four people familiar with the matter said.

It was remarkable that the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington — led by Jeanine Pirro, a longtime ally of Mr. Trump’s — authorized prosecutors to go into a grand jury and ask for an indictment of the six members of Congress, all of whom had served in the military or the nation’s spy agencies.

But it was even more remarkable that a group of ordinary citizens sitting on the grand jury in Federal District Court in Washington forcefully rejected Mr. Trump’s bid to label their expression of dissent as a criminal act warranting prosecution.

The move to charge the lawmakers — among them, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona and Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan — was, by any measure, an extraordinary attempt by Trump appointees to politicize the criminal justice system even for a Justice Department that has repeatedly shattered norms of independence from the White House and followed Mr. Trump’s directives to prosecute his adversaries.

But manipulating bureaucratic levers is not the same thing as controlling the entire criminal justice system.

Before Mr. Trump’s second term, it had been exceedingly rare for grand jurors to rebuff requests by prosecutors seeking indictments. It is now happening with increased frequency, as Mr. Trump’s appointees push ahead with questionable cases in an effort to appease him.