


For the third time in slightly more than a week, grand jurors in Washington have rejected efforts by federal prosecutors to obtain an indictment against a resident accused of a felony assault against a federal agent.
The pattern of failure — in what was now three separate cases — suggested that something extraordinary was taking place in the city’s federal courts. It indicated that the ordinary people called upon to sit on grand juries were pushing back against efforts by prosecutors to harshly charge fellow citizens who had encountered law enforcement officers on the streets at a moment when President Trump had flooded them with National Guard troops and federal agents.
While all three rejections came in cases being heard in Federal District Court in Washington, it was unclear if they had been presented to the same grand jury. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, which had brought each of the cases, did not respond to a message seeking comment.
It is highly unusual for prosecutors to fail to obtain an indictment from grand jurors given that they are in almost complete control of the grand jury process. But the fact that grand juries have now rejected indictments against three separate defendants accused of assaulting federal agents — in some incidents that were clearly captured on video — was all but unheard-of.
Something similar, and equally extraordinary, happened in Los Angeles last month as federal prosecutors struggled to obtain indictments against protesters arrested during demonstrations against federal immigration actions.
Crime has fallen in Washington since federal agents started policing the streets in large numbers, according to a review by The New York Times. The surge, however, has chafed against some residents who have found the presence of troops and agents to be a cause of fear, not of security.